Breaking Habits: The Role Of Implementation Intention, Cognitive Load And Perceived Behavioral Control

Habit is an automatic behavioral pattern which can be triggered by certainperformance contexts, there are many obstacles when one tries to break an existing habit.This study considered behavioral intention and perceived behavioral control in habitbreaking based on the theory of planned behavior which plays a very important role in theprediction and intervention in human behavior. The efficacy of implementation intention asa strategy which enhances one's goal attainment was also considered. As the fact thatcognitive processes are involved in habit breaking, cognitive load may have a major impactduring one's habit breaking goal attainment. The three variables were studied in twoexperiments:1. Habit is an automatic behavioral pattern which emerges from the repetition ofassociations between performance contexts and responses, it can be built in the laboratorythrough certain repetition times (20times in this study).2. Cognitive load can be manipulated by time pressure during the task. Age shouldbe considered as a co-variance with reaction time.3. Cognitive load has a significant impact in habit breaking, the lower cognitive loadlevel the better of the habit breaking goal attainment.4. Perceived behavioral control and cognitive load may have an interaction throughself-efficacy.5. Implementation intention is an effective strategy specifying a replacement ofhabitual response, which can improve both accuracy and efficiency in habit breaking.Implementation intention may have more impact on human behavior than just specifyingan alternative automatic behavior pattern.