CSG on Habit

Friday, June 12, 2015 15:27
I am in a discussion group reading
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.

I would appreciate any views and references you wish to share with me about this aspect of behavior in our
own PCT terms as control of perception.

At first search through my PCT works, I only find a reference in Behavior: The Control of Perception in the section on Model Building, p 15 ff in paperback edition.

Many thanks in advance for any help you offer in response to my request.

Lloyd
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[From Rick Marken (2015.06.12.1600)]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:10 PM, "lloydk@klinedinst.com" ‪<csgnet@lists.illinois.edu>‬ wrote:
LK: I am in a discussion group reading
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.

LK: I would appreciate any views and references you wish to share with me about this aspect of behavior in our
own PCT terms as control of perception.

RM: Sure, I'll try. But first I have to know what Duhigg means by "habit". What is the phenomenon we're trying to explain? 

RM: As I recall from my undergraduate psychology classes, a "habit" referred to a stimulus-response link. If that's what Duhigg means by "habit" then a habit is like a reflex. So my explanation of reflex can count as my PCT explanation of habit. 

Best 

Rick

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[From Fred Nickols (2015.06.12.1905)]

I think it is a little more complicated than that. Duhigg refers to cue-routine-reward as the means by which a habit is formed. Many a behaviorist of my acquaintance of mine would yawn and say, "Stimulus-Response-Reinforcement" - so what?  I think there is more to it than that. 

To answer your question, by "habit" he seems to mean an automatic or unthinking action. I am reading the book because I have a hunch it is important.  He writes about the location in the brain where all this takes place. I don't recall that Bill ever situated the hierarchy in the brain. So it remains an abstract structure with no precise physical home. 

Anyway, I'll keep reading. 

Fred Nickols
Managing Partner
Distance Consulting LLC
Be sure you measure what you want.
Be sure you want what you measure.

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[From: Richard Pfau (2015.06.12 23:47 EST)]
 
Ref:  ""lloydk@klinedinst.com"" Fri, Jun 12, 2015 4:27 pm

A habit is simply the observable behavior of a control system that has been organized such that its actions, which seem to be similar during different occurrences, are effective in producing a desired perception in similar situations.  Originally the actions taken to reach the desired perception and associated reference were carried out, either consciously or unconsciously, in a way that led to the elimination or reduction of an error signal, such that the desired reference perception was achieved.  Over time, the system was organized or reorganized in a way that the behavior involved was repeated when similar situations, perceptions, error signals, and their reduction occurred -- and what is called "a habit" or "habitual behavior" was established.
 
Duhigg describes "The Habit Loop", where a Cue leads to a Routine which leads to a Reward which leads to the Cue and so on around the loop.  In short, using his loop with PCT in mind, a Cue (which results in perceptual signals that, when compared to a reference, produces error signals) leads to a Routine (such as similar physical behavior that has occurred over several cycles) that leads to a Reward (a decrease or elimination of the error signal) that over several cycles establishes a control system which is activated when similar Cues/Situations and related error signals occur.
 
Duhigg seems to have part of the control loop idea in mind, but leaves out important aspects such as references and error signals.
 
At least, that's the way it seems to me.
 
With Regards,
Richard Pfau
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[From Fred Nickols (2015.06.13.0432 EST)]
 
I think Richard’s explanation is consistent with my view of things.  I had it laid out in my mind as follows:
 
Cue – Routine – Reward
Stimulus – Response – Reinforcement
GAP – ACT – GAP CLOSED

A gap being a discrepancy between the perceived value of a controlled variable and the reference value for that variable (i.e., an error signal).
 
I’m still reading…
 
Fred Nickols
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[From Rick Marken (2015.06.13.0800)]

Fred Nickols (2015.06.12.1905)

FN: I think it is a little more complicated than that.

RM: What is more complicated than what? 
 
FN: Duhigg refers to cue-routine-reward as the means by which a habit is formed. Many a behaviorist of my acquaintance of mine would yawn and say, "Stimulus-Response-Reinforcement" - so what?  I think there is more to it than that. 

RM: This is Duhigg's explanation of a habit but I still don't know what he thinks a habit it. What do I look for to see that a habit is happening?
 
FN: To answer your question, by "habit" he seems to mean an automatic or unthinking action.

RM: "Automatic" and "unthinking" are not things that I can see in behavior. I think Duhigg may not be clear about the difference between a fact (observation) and an explanation of that fact. 
 
FN: I am reading the book because I have a hunch it is important.

RM: From what I've heard so far I can assure you that it is not. 
 
FN: He writes about the location in the brain where all this takes place.

RM: Now I'm sure that it's nonsense. This is just the new phrenology, where claiming that the identification of some location in the brain (identified by a high tech technique like fMRI) as being responsible for some behavioral phenomenon constitutes an explanation of that phenomenon. This is junk science at it's most pompous. 
 
FN: I don't recall that Bill ever situated the hierarchy in the brain. So it remains an abstract structure with no precise physical home. 

RM: I love you Fred but I've gotta say that am really tired of hearing about how PCT is not anchored in neurophyiology. I've heard this as a reason to pay attention to the equilibrium point nonsense and now I get it as a reason to pay attention to this habit stuff. In fact Bill did "situate" the hierarchy in the "brain" (actually, in the whole nervous system) and he did an extremely good job of it. Take a look, for example, at Figures 7.1 and 9.1 in B:CP. I've always found Bill's "anchoring" of PCT in neurophysiology to be orders of magnitude better than what I've seen done by the presumed experts in neurophysiology.  

FN: Anyway, I'll keep reading. 

RM: I think you'd be better off reading "Doing Research on Purpose". If you bought it sales would increase by nearly 100% and I might even get a review on Amazon finally!;-)

Best

Rick
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[From Rick Marken (2015.06.13.0915)]

Richard Pfau (2015.06.12 23:47 EST)

 Ref:  ""lloydk@klinedinst.com"" Fri, Jun 12, 2015 4:27 pm
 
A habit is simply the observable behavior of a control system that has been organized such that its actions, which seem to be similar during different occurrences, are effective in producing a desired perception in similar situations. 

RM: I can't tell who is saying what in this post -- Lloyd or Richard -- so I don't know who I'm replying to. Maybe that's not important. Anyway, this definition of a habit is strange since it defines the phenomenon in terms of an explanation. If a "habit" is just the operation of a control system then a habit is a word that refers to the behavior of a control system; that is,  "habit" is just another word for "control". 

Originally the actions taken to reach the desired perception and associated reference were carried out, either consciously or unconsciously, in a way that led to the elimination or reduction of an error signal, such that the desired reference perception was achieved.  Over time, the system was organized or reorganized in a way that the behavior involved was repeated when similar situations, perceptions, error signals, and their reduction occurred -- and what is called "a habit" or "habitual behavior" was established.

RM: In control what is repeated is the state of the controlled controlled variable. This consistency can only be achieved by varying the actions that affect this varuable appropriately, so as to protect it from the effects of disturbances.  So if "habit" refers to a "behavior" that is repeated then "behavior" can only refer to the controlled variable, not to the actions that control this variable. 

Duhigg describes "The Habit Loop", where a Cue leads to a Routine which leads to a Reward which leads to the Cue and so on around the loop.  In short, using his loop with PCT in mind, a Cue (which results in perceptual signals that, when compared to a reference, produces error signals) leads to a Routine (such as similar physical behavior that has occurred over several cycles) that leads to a Reward (a decrease or elimination of the error signal) that over several cycles establishes a control system which is activated when similar Cues/Situations and related error signals occur.

RM: What is being described here is a sequential S-R "loop". This is not a control loop. A control loop, as you may recall, is organized around the control of perceptual variables. Based on the above description of the loop I take "Cue" to correspond to "disturbance". There is no description of the perceptual variable (PV) to which this Cue is a disturbance. But if this is a control loop then there must be a controlled PV that is affected by both the Cue and the output, which is apparently the "Routine". 

RM: The term reward simply refers to the result of the negative feedback relationship between output (Routine) and the error that drives the output (the difference between PV and reference). This system will vary its output Routine as necessary to keep the PV at the reference. Assuming that the PV is the perceived relationship between Routine and Cue and that the reference is for the Routine to occur only when the Cue is present then this loop will produce a Routine when the Cue is present and no Routine when it's not. This will look like the Cue is causing the system to "habitually" produce the Routine but, of course, this is just the behavioral illusion, an illusion that would be revealed if the reference for the PV were changed from "do the routine on Cue" to "do the routine only when there is no Cue". 
 
Duhigg seems to have part of the control loop idea in mind, but leaves out important aspects such as references and error signals.

RM: Yes, and he leaves out what is even more important: the perceptual variable that is being controlled by the control system. Also, note that there are no "cycles" in a control loop; a control system is not a sequential state process; all variables in the loop are varying simultaneously (we have to imitate this fact when we make models of control on sequential state machines like digital computers).  
 
At least, that's the way it seems to me.

RM: I think the problem here is that PCT shows that many of the presumed phenomena that conventional psychology takes very seriously -- things like reinforcement, habit, reflex, etc -- are really just aspects of control (see my "Blind Men and the Elephant" paper in "More Mind Readings", another book I recommend in lieu of the Duhigg book;-) This, of course, makes it tough to talk with people who take conventional psychology seriously since they are mainly talking about illusions. And, of course, that doesn't help them fall in love with PCT either. This is why you really have to be prepared to "get no respect" from conventional psychologists when you start talking to them about PCT. 

Best regards

Rick
——————————
(2015.06.15.1015)
I bought the book.
 
Fred
——————————
[From Rick Marken (2015.06.15.0840)]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 8:05 AM, Fred Nickols ‪<fred@nickols.us>‬ wrote:
FN: I bought the book.

RM: Thanks Fred. Sales are skyrocketing! I'll be rich, I tell you, rich !!

Best 

Rick
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MY REPLY TO CONTRIBUTIONS
Thanks much for the comments so far - very helpful.
I deliberately omitted giving my views of habit before hearing some of CSGnet members’ comments.
	To Ricks initial question: “…what Duhigg means by "habit". What is the phenomenon we're trying to explain?”
	I fully agree and had already searched the Duhigg text and found no definition - lots about his hobby horse, The Habit Loop - How Habits Work, but still no definition.
	Rick recalls correctly and guesses accurately what Duhigg seems to mean. In the book Duhigg says: “I first became interested in the science of habits eight years ago, as a newspaper reporter in Baghdad, when I heard about an army major conducting an experiment…”  So it is at core an S-R view exemplified in military training.
		Rick’s recall from “undergraduate psychology classes, a "habit" referred to a stimulus-response link.” and his suggesting “If that's what Duhigg means by "habit" then a habit is like a reflex. So my explanation of reflex can count as my PCT explanation of habit.” is  very much aligned with my perceptions of Duhigg’s understanding of habit.
	Fred Nichols then weighs in: “by "habit" he seems to mean an automatic or unthinking action.” As Duhigg goes on to elaborate by exemplary stories (e.g. Tony Dungy and the Buccaneers) the whole idea is:
“He wanted to get players to stop making so many decisions during a game, he said. He wanted them to react automatically, habitually. If he could instill the right habits, his team would win.”
	Fred’s reference then adds a dimension to the habit ‘definition’:
“He writes about the location in the brain where all this takes place. I don't recall that Bill ever situated the hierarchy in the brain. So it remains an abstract structure with no precise physical home.”
	In addressing this mention of Fred’s I want to insert the text of one place I did find some reference to habit in Bill’s works (I only find a reference in Behavior: The Control of Perception in the section on Model Building, p 15 ff in paperback edition.) where Bill also DOES address habit’s instantiation in the physical organism.
	I encourage the rereading of the BCP section on “Model Building”, pp14-18 - even the whole chapter 2. Models and Generalizations.
	But to answer Fred’s recall, “I don't recall that Bill ever situated the hierarchy in the brain. So it remains an abstract structure with no precise physical home.”, I cite just a few lines from the text I suggest to reread (which includes a number of references to habit):
It can be argued that psychologists have tried building models of this kind, but I do not think this is true to any significant degree.

Models and Generalizations 15

Rather, I think they have tried but did not understand how a model of this type is constructed and so have ended by creating abstract generalizations that sounded like models but were not models. (There are, of course, significant exceptions, some of which I will
mention later.)

Several examples come to mind. Freud‘s id, ego, and superego might possibly qualify as models except for one fact: They were defined in terms of the symptoms they produced, which means that their individual properties were not underlying properties but simply subdivisions of observed symptoms. Another would be Clark Hull’s theory (1940) of habit strength. A “habit” in this “mathematico-deductive" theory was spoken of as existing inside an organism, but its strength was measured by seeing for how long a time a behavior pattern would persist after the rewards used to establish it were terminated. The entities in this theory were not inner properties of an organism interacting with each other, but simply ways of classifying observable behavior patterns. The term strength may sound as if it refers to a property of some inner organization that accounts for the persistence that is seen, but habit strength is in fact defined in terms of the consequences of some property which remains unnamed and unknown.

Pseudomodels like Hull's and Freud’s and many others represent earnest attempts to penetrate beneath the surface appearances of behavior. They could not have succeeded in any signiﬁcant way because they were based on unspoken subjective criteria. I suppose it was hoped that if the right entities could be seen in behavior, they would turn out to have some correlation with the actual inner operation of nervous systems, but the brain itself remained an enigma, a hopelessly complex structure beyond analysis. There was little to guide the guesswork. The problem is that there are too many overlapping ways to categorize the regularities of behavior, and they can’t all correspond to the brain’s inner organization. To ﬁnd some reason to choose one way of looking at behavior over another, one needs information from outside the conceptual scheme. Self-consistency alone is not enough to provide a basis for choice, since many different schemes are self-consistent.

[and]

This book presents a model of the brain's internal organization which as far as I can tell now is of the same type as the molecular theory of matter, in that the entities that are supposed to reside in the brain have individual properties as molecules have individual masses and velocities. Observed behavior is deduced not from past examples of behavior, but from the way in which these internal entities interact with each other and the external world. Of course these entities have been carefully chosen to behave properly when put together, but they have also been selected to fit anatomical hints about the nervous system (as far as I understand them), physical models of the organism and its environment, subjective experience, and elementary mathematical logic. Many models might be consistent with one or two of these classes of knowledge, but not many will satisfy all these criteria.

	Later Richard Pfau who had asked a question a few days earlier on reflex (2015.06.09 10:52EST) offers a definition with corollary terms from Duhigg compared with our PCT terminology. I agree for the most part with his interpretation and had formulated something like it myself.
	He said: “A habit is simply the observable behavior of a control system that has been organized such that its actions, which seem to be similar during different occurrences, are effective in producing a desired perception in similar situations.”

	My working definition of habit before I asked the question on CSGnet was: a set of repeated and preferred behaviors regularly invoked in given similar conditions.
	I get back on my hobby horse and insist on the distinction between non-observable behavior (i.e. control) and action, that part of behavior(i.e. the control loop) which is observable.
	I see, I think with Richard, that Duhigg’s Cue is our Perception (specifically the CV (controlled variable) as it is the qi (Input Quantity)) portion of the loop.
	So, occasioned by Richard’s post, I would change my working definition to:
a repeatedly used and preferred control system regularly invoked in given similar environmental conditions.
	I also agree with Richard in that Duhigg is a closet or self-announced behaviorist who “leaves out important aspects such as references and error signals.”
	The next post from Fred also agreed in general with Richard, spinning the terms with his ‘own brand language’.
	Rick’s post then gets at some of the details of Fred’s informal definition:
FN: To answer your question, by "habit" he seems to mean an automatic or unthinking action.

RM: "Automatic" and "unthinking" are not things that I can see in behavior. I think Duhigg may not be clear about the difference between a fact (observation) and an explanation of that fact.
	I agree with what Richard is saying, relating it to my hobby horse distinction between action (qo) and behavior, the control of perception. Duhigg might say, the habit exercised in a similar situation, like the Indianapolis Colts automatic moves or Phelps’ swimming behaviors contributed to their successes.
	The next point of Rick’s contention with Fred is the ‘casting nets’ pseudo-science Duhigg uses. (Bill: “Pseudomodels like Hull's and Freud’s and many others represent earnest attempts to penetrate beneath the surface appearances of behavior.”) 
And I add Rick’s citation of Bill’s detailed instantiation of the control loop in our physical structure with Figures 7.1 and 9.1 in B:CP.
	I am quite satisfied with the results of all the help you scholars and gentlemen have provided. I can speak more clearly and authoritatively at my group’s weekly discussion of this book.
	Thanks much!