Creatures of Habit: Automatic Health Behaviour

The typical canon in health promotion is that a campaign is the result of credible facts, gathered via scientific research, and translated into logical cause-effect messages. This frame of thinking is widely based on the assumption that people will logically and rationally process messages, based on cognitive-behavioural theories (such as the Health Belief Model or Theory of Planned Behaviour) that emphasise a logical cognitive path towards the ultimate behavioural response. Yet, scholars in humanistic psychology and neuroscience found that motivation to engage in some behaviour is both goal-directed (the reflective or rational response, we described above), yet also habitual (also known as reflexive, intuitive, or automatic). These studies highlight the notion of self-identity as a mental concept that creates order for people in the way they make and explain decisions.