App-Based Habit Building Reduces Motivational Impairments During Studying – An Event Sampling Study

Abstract

In this app-based event sampling study, we observed the intentional formation of new study habits. A sample of 91 university students defined individual study habits and logged data over 6 weeks on motivational conflict, motivational interference (MI) and automaticity of behavior after each habit repetition using an app on their phone. The app was specifically created for this study and gave feedback on habit automaticity. A total of N = 2,574 habit repetitions have been generated and were analyzed using multilevel modeling. The results suggest that (1) app-based intentional habit building works, as automaticity of behavior could be predicted by habit repetition, (2) motivational impairments during studying can be reduced by building habits, as want conflicts and MI decreased with automaticity, and (3) trait self-control supports studying indirectly by fostering habit building rather than directly by suppressing impulses during the activity, as self-control predicted automaticity, but not motivational impairments during the habit execution. The effect of self-control on automaticity of the new study habit was fully mediated by the general automaticity of the students' other study habits (general study habit strength). This study showcases an app-guided genesis of new study habits and its beneficial motivational effects for learning behavior.

Self-Efficacy in Habit Building: How General and Habit-Specific Self-Efficacy Influence Behavioral Automatization and Motivational Interference

“…In the first study, university students built study habits in the context of a controlled study. We already published results from the first dataset showing that automaticity increased with habit repetitions and that automaticity reduces MI (Stojanovic et al, 2020). In the present article, we will test GSE as a predictor for automaticity and MI.…”

“…Congruent with these considerations, more complex habits seem to take longer to build automaticity (Verplanken, 2006). It is not clear if complex habits generally have a lower maximally attainable level of automaticity than simple habits or just take longer to build it, but there is evidence that even moderate levels of automaticity of relatively complex study habits lead to a significant reduction of MI (Stojanovic et al, 2020).…”

“…The first dataset stems from a longitudinal habit building study in which students used an app to build new study habits. Analyzes on this dataset have already been published (Stojanovic et al, 2020), but the role of the trait variable GSE (Level 2) for automaticity and MI has not yet been analyzed. The habit builder app that was used in this study was optimized and published on Apple's AppStore (Stojanovic, 2019).…”

“…More specifically, habits are automized behavioral patterns that get instigated through context-dependent triggers (Ouellette and Wood, 1998;Lally et al, 2010;Gardner et al, 2011;Verplanken, 2018). The more often a habit is executed, the more automatic it becomes (Lally et al, 2010;Stojanovic et al, 2020). When long-term behavioral change is to be induced, a promising approach is to establish good habits.…”

Performance Habits: A Framework Proposal

“…Indeed paying attention to the numerous factors influencing performance can be quite effortful and cognitively demanding (Raab et al, 2015 ). Habits, reflecting actions relying on automatic functioning, free up resources for further top-down processing (Graybiel, 2008 ; Lally and Gardner, 2013 ) and reduce motivational impairments (Stojanovic et al, 2020 ). At this point, we should distinguish between habits and the automatic processes driving skill automaticity observed in expert performance, given in this case that the automatic processes are not necessarily the result of a learned stimulus–response association but rather the result of an extensive learning/training phase that automatized skills via a modification in brain activation patterns (Baker and Young, 2014 ; Yang, 2015 ).…”