Behavior and Habit

In the previous post I presented the learning progression that is used in the Training and Development industry, shown below, and stated that quadrant 4 is the quadrant that professional & leadership development organizations aim for; the quadrant that businesses such as success coaching, life coaching, e-therapy, executive/business coaching, and 1-to-1 counseling aim for as well.

• Quadrant I – You don’t know that you don’t know.
• Quadrant II – You know that you don’t know.
• Quadrant III – You know what you need to know and do, but it takes effort and concentration, which is not readily or easily done given stress levels of home and work life balance. This quadrant is not a natural state of being.
• Quadrant IV – You know and can do or say without thought, a natural state of being; an unconscious behavioral response to a given situation. A newly formed habit.

 Most importantly, I posed the following questions: If you look at the learning progression, how does one step from the conscious-behavior-modification quadrant (3) to the unconscious-habitual-response quadrant (4)? And why is it so hard for adults to reach it, thereby permanently improving their performance be it professionally or personally?

Some of you may ask yourself what qualifications do I have to make the allegation that most adults who want to change or modify their behavior usually don’t reach quadrant 4 and those who do are few and far between. I will answer it by saying that my qualifications are not a Ph.D. or having conducted empirical research on that subject. What I do have is almost a decade of working in the training and development field; analyzing data at level 4 of Kirkpatrick’s Evaluating Training Programs; years of reading books and academic articles on the subject of behavioral change and performance improvement; graduate studies in Instructional Training Systems; and, I will admit, years of counseling. I do not claim that this post is an academic one. It is the history of how Interlogues was born and the beliefs that drive it forward.

Change takes time and it cannot, does not, happen automatically after reaching quadrant 3 which is the transfer of knowledge that takes place in a course, seminar, or 1-to-1 sessions, to name a few. Additionally, an important part that is needed for change to occur is an understanding of the correlation between behavior and habit. That corrolation is at the core of behavioral change.

 To define "behavior" and "habit," I used several dictionaries but decided on an electronic dictionary so that you could see for yourself, if needed. The definitions of habit and behavior are these:

• Habit is an automatic pattern of behavior in reaction to a specific situation; may be inherited or acquired through frequent repetition.
• Behavior is the aggregate of the responses or reactions or movements made by an organism in any situation. 

According to Carol Pierce-Davis, Ph.D. (TxHSP, FSMI, FICPP), a habit is by definition a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiological exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance; an acquired mode of a behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary; implies a doing unconsciously or without premeditation, often compulsively.

Additionally, Pierce-Davis states that people develop through life a core belief structure that dominates our experience of the world. It does so by generating an expectation that precedes us into whatever situation we enter. When our expectation meets a situation or event, we experience it in our own unique way. It is the product of a collision of expectation and reality. What follows instantaneously is a cascade of response: an automatic thought followed by physiological, emotional, and behavioral responses.

Therefore if behavior is driven by habit and habit is driven by automatic thought, then at the core of changing behavior is changing the initial automatic thought. The change is not a simple or easy process. It is tantamount to changing one's mother tongue. It is changing the language a person acquired early in life, a language in which the individual has been immersed lifelong. It is similar to the hypnotic programming Dr. Maltz described in his book, Psycho-Cybernetics that is resistant to change, having gained permanence through repetition and intensity.

Transfer of knowledge, i.e. learning, is complicated enough. Unlearning an old habit and learning a new one is particularly complex. At the onset of change and during the period between quadrant 3 and quadrant 4, there is an infinitesimal moment between stimulus and response that occurs at the subconscious level and it is then, at that infinitesimal moment, that a person must wedge his conscious thought.

According Stephen F. Covey’s Proactive Model in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, changing a habit consists of “The Freedom to Choose” which consists of self-awareness, imagination, conscious, and independent will. Covey writes that, “our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.”

I agree with Covey’s Proactive Model, but I believe that it takes more than self-awareness, imagination, conscious, and independent will to transform the triggered responses of a habit. These components do not come easily and freely to most people. According to study conducted by Wendy Wood, James. B. Duke Professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University the key to changing habits is in the environment, and not willpower.

Moreover, the misplaced belief that will power or “The Freedom to Choose” alone change an unconscious behavioral response inadvertently sets up most individuals for failure and unfulfilled hopes because the change does not occur in the expected time frame or at the level of change where the triggered response longer takes serious conscious effort and concentration.

Janet Polivy and Peter Herman of Toronto University “describe this cycle of failure and renewed effort [at self-change] as a ‘false hope syndrome’ characterized by unrealistic expectations about the likely speed, amount, ease, and consequences of self-change attempts.” In their False Hope Syndrome Model the show six stages: Unrealistic Expectations, Commitment to change (feelings of control), Initial efforts (early success), Resistance to change (change stops), Failure/Abandon attempt, and Attributions of failure.

Another research study conducted by Carlo DiClemente, Ph.D., and James O. Prochaska, Ph.D., identified five stages of change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. These stages became the cornerstone of their Transtheoretical Model of Change.

What I have attempted to show is that there are components missing in “The Freedom to Choose,” or the mainstream belief of what is needed to make behavioral change happen. These components are what Interlogues will provide with its proprietary system and tool that uses a methodology that may rely on one or more of the following concepts: andragogy; cognitive behavioral psychology; personality inventories matrices; second language acquisition techniques; internal dialogues and neuro-plasticity.

References:
Parts of this post were reviewed and edit by Carol Pierce-Davis Ph.D.

Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. (2004). New York, NY: Free Press.

Kegan, Robert, and Lahey, Lisa L. (2001). How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Kegan, Robert. (1982). The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development. Boston, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Kentridge, R.W. Operant conditioning and behaviorism - an historical outline. [On-line].
http://www.biozentrum.uni-uerzburg.de/genetics/behavior/learning/behaviorism.html

Maltz, Maxwell, M.D. (2001) The New Psycho-Cybernetics. New York, NY: Penguin Group.

Murphy, Joseph, Ph.D. (2008). The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. New York, NY: Prentice Hall Press.

Polivy, Janet, and Herman, Peter. “Effects of resolving to change one's own behavior: expectations vs. experience.” Behavioral Therapy. (2009) Jun;40(2):164-70.

Salomon, G. (ed.) (1993) Distributed Cognitions. Psychological and educational considerations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tennant, M. and Pogson, P. (1995) Learning and Change in the Adult Years. A developmental perspective, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Velicer, W. F, Prochaska, J. O., Fava, J. L.,Norman, G. J., & Redding, C. A. Detailed Overview of the Transtheoretical Model. (1998) [On-line].
http://www.uri.edu/research/cprc/TTM/detailedoverview.htm