Sheeran, Paschal, Aarts, Henk, Custers, Ruud, Rivis, Amanda, Cooke, Richard and Webb, Thomas L. (2005) The goal dependent automaticity of drinking habits. British Journal of Social Psychology, 44 (1). pp. 47-63. ISSN 0144-6665
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Abstract
In recent treatments of habitual social behaviour, habits are conceptualised as a form of goal-directed automatic behaviour that are mentally represented as goal-action links. Three experiments tested this conceptualisation in the context of students’ drinking (alcohol consumption) habits. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions where either a goal related to drinking behaviour (socialising) was activated, or an unrelated goal was activated. In addition, participants’ drinking habits were measured. The dependent variable in Experiments 1 and 2 was readiness to drink, operationalised by speed of responding to the action concept “drinking” in a verb verification task. Experiment 3 used uptake of a voucher to measure drinking behaviour. Findings supported the view that when habits are established, simply activating a goal related to the focal behaviour automatically elicits that behaviour. These findings are consistent with a goal-dependent conception of habit. Possibilities for interventions designed to attenuate undesirable habitual behaviours are considered.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2005 The British Psychological Society. This is an author produced version of a paper published in British Journal of Social Psychology. This paper has been peer-reviewed but does not include the final publisher proof-corrections or journal pagination. |
| Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
| Depositing User: | Paschal Sheeran |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Oct 2005 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Feb 2013 16:48 |
| Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1348/014466604X23446 |
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Identification Number: | 10.1348/014466604X23446 |
| URI: | http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/704 |
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