How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world
Lally and colleagues ran the study that produced the number everyone misquotes. Ninety-six volunteers each chose one eating, drinking or activity behaviour to perform daily in the same context, such as after breakfast, and reported every day for twelve weeks on whether they had done it and how automatic it felt. Automaticity rose along a curve that flattens out rather than a straight line, the shape you would expect if each repetition adds less than the one before. The time taken to approach the individual ceiling ranged from about eighteen days to well over two hundred, with wide variation between people and behaviours, which is why any single average is misleading. Two further findings are practically useful: consistency of context was associated with the process working at all, and missing a single opportunity did not measurably damage progress. The sample is small and self-selected. This vault cites it whenever the twenty-one days claim appears, and for the point that one lapse is not a relapse.
Lally and colleagues ran the study that produced the number everyone misquotes. Ninety-six volunteers each chose one eating, drinking or activity behaviour to perform daily in the same context, such as after breakfast, and reported every day for twelve weeks on whether they had done it and how automatic it felt. Automaticity rose along a curve that flattens out rather than a straight line, the shape you would expect if each repetition adds less than the one before. The time taken to approach the individual ceiling ranged from about eighteen days to well over two hundred, with wide variation between people and behaviours, which is why any single average is misleading. Two further findings are practically useful: consistency of context was associated with the process working at all, and missing a single opportunity did not measurably damage progress. The sample is small and self-selected. This vault cites it whenever the twenty-one days claim appears, and for the point that one lapse is not a relapse.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W. & Wardle, J. (2010). "How are habits formed: modelling habit formation in the real world." European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009.
Where we use it
- Nobody Is Born Consistent, Why We Move
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.674