Habit (psychology)

As a habit (also common practice, lat uti " use " ) a developed under similar conditions the reaction is referred to, which was stereotyped by repetition and is run as automatically according to the same reaction scheme in same situation conditions, if it is not consciously avoided or suppressed. There are habits of feeling, thinking and behavior.

In playful contexts or intentionally, so consciously learned, especially in school and teaching specific behaviors practiced, however, as all the useful habits ( eg, to speak in the mother tongue ) even under the most routine as skills or - especially with larger skill while - also referred to as skill.

The formation of habits, particularly in the form of likes and dislikes are already showing unicellular organisms that can be conditioned, so have one for the observer recognizable retentiveness. In humans, the ability to learn has expanded far beyond a pronounced and actively influenced memory ability, but the fifth year of life of a person begins at the first sign in the fourth to show. Their designation as "memory" refers to the fact that it is a condition of all thought, which, however, in turn, can also be easy to mere habit as an activity.

Modern brain research believes that in human development in the first decade of life, as concerns particularly favorable neurobiological conditions for elementary learning processes exist in the first half, with the result that trained very easily and quickly in these years of life habits.

The phrase of the " force of habit (s) " on the other hand refers to the fact that an act or make on the basis of distinct habits faster comes about as a conscious act, the more because of the necessary for its preparation considerations and decisions always time takes as a knee-jerk reaction coming into being habitual response. Another phrase - "Man is a creature of habit " - gives an indication of the evolutionary roots of habit. Konrad Lorenz has found, among other observations from his goose Martina that certain, even minor behaviors that are also running in compellingly threatening situation just happens to be a habit. Since this increases the probability of an evolutionary survival in similar situations. A deviation from habits connected before this evolutionary background with inner tensions.

Pronounced or rigid thinking and behavioral habits can be detrimental to the creativity and lead to a retracted, more or less unthinking response. In addition, habitual reaction requires for its reflexive process little attention. Strong habitual responding may therefore lead to higher grade selective attention and about to habitual inattention, because the turn a habitual reaction is further promoted.

Indicates a significant number of members of a group have the same habit as these to unquestioned social custom or collective belief can be. More complex customs are, however, more aware retained, particularly if they have to be trained and be downright maintained on the same occasions such as seasonal festivals at specific times or at specified time points. In common action based also customary rights and obligations that go back for a longer time maintained agreements and mutual commitments, which at first perhaps only individual persons only ad hoc had entered another and perhaps.

• To be distinguished from a habit is the habit or habituation. Hence the phenomenon, it is meant that an individual to a repeated stimulus experienced increasingly smaller or in extreme cases is no longer reactions. We speak in such cases of desensitization. They can be used specifically in the form of systematic desensitization; in humans, it needs to mostly miteinschließen also conscious attitude changes.