Performance Habits: A Framework Proposal

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Sylvain Laborde¹  Daniela Kauschke¹  Thomas J. Hosang⁴  Florian Javelle⁵  Emma Mosley⁶ 

[1] Department of Performance Psychology, German Sport University Cologne;Normandie Université;Universität Mannheim;Helmut Schmidt University;Department of Sport Medicine, German Sport University Cologne;Southampton Solent University, United Kingdom

关键词: optimization;    automatic processes;    habits;    performance;    human;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01815

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Improving one’s performance is a persistent desire for many individuals. Performance is often usedas an umbrella term to describe the behavior and activities of individuals or larger entities, suchas organizations, and could ultimately be linked to evolutionary success (Buss, 2019). Specifically,we define performance as how effectively an action is executed and how successful behavior is toachieve a goal [based on (McGarry, 2013; Raab et al., 2015)].One common tip to improve performance is developing habits. Various definitions of habitscoexist in the literature, and in this paper we consider habits as processes “by which a stimulusgenerates an impulse to act as a result of a learned stimulus–response association” [(Gardner,2015), p. 277]. Habits are driven by automatic processes in that they do not require conscious andintentional processing of related information (Graybiel, 2008; Lally and Gardner, 2013). Habitsshould be distinguished from routines, which can be viewed as organized activities with purpose,direction, sequence, outcomes, and repetition, but which are not necessarily based on a learnedstimulus–response association (Clark, 2000; Charmaz, 2002; Gardner, 2015). Rituals are often usedas a synonym for routines; however routines are seen as being rather mostly instrumental to reacha goal, while rituals encompass a symbolic meaning in a specific group context (Fiese et al., 2002).Habitual behavior can be distinguished in terms of habitual instigation—habitually “deciding” todo something—and habitual execution—habitually “doing” something (Gardner et al., 2016, 2020).Regarding habit formation, Lally and Gardner (2013) identified four basic stages: First, a decisionmust be made to take action. Second, the decision to act must be translated into action. Third,the behavior must be repeated, and finally, the new action must be repeated in a way that leadsto automaticity.

【 授权许可】

CC BY