Abstract
Mindfulness is widely recognized as an effective technique for managing mental and physical health. However, a significant challenge remains when attempting to transform its practice into a habit. To understand the individual characteristics and contexts that correlate with habit formation experiences, we conducted a six-week observational study involving 62 participants who planned to adopt a new mindful breathing habit. Overall, 47.4% (N = 1,234) of daily surveys were completed and 41 participants completed the post-study survey. Using a growth curve modeling framework, we confirm the presence of significant overall change in habit automaticity across participants in the first 21 days of habit practice. Furthermore, we identify four factors that are significantly correlated with the gradient of participant habit formation trajectories: how committed a participant is to building the habit before starting the practice period, their prior mindfulness experience, and two dimensions of personality – agreeableness and emotional stability.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Behavioral frequency and identity also relate to the notion of habit strength. However, we do not assess these concepts given: i) our study introduces bias on behavioral frequency by asking participants to practice the habit daily, and ii) related work cites disagreements in using identity as a measure of habit strength [11, 19].
- 2.
We use the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation algorithm in R’s nlme package [14].
References
Bargh, J.: The four horsemen of automaticity: awareness, intention, efficiency, and control in social cognition (1994)
Bollen, K., Curran, P.: Latent Curve Models: A Structural Equation Perspective. Social Forces 467 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1002/0471746096
Clapp, J., et al.: Modeling trajectory of depressive symptoms among psychiatric inpatients: a latent growth curve approach. J. Clin. Psychiatry 74, 492–499 (2013). https://doi.org/10.4088/JCP.12m07842
Creswell, J.D.: Mindfulness interventions. Ann. Rev. Psychol. 68, 491–516 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-042716-051139
Curran, P., Obeidat, K., Losardo, D.: Twelve frequently asked questions about growth curve modeling. J. Cogn. Dev. 11, 121–136 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1080/15248371003699969
Galla, B., Duckworth, A.: More than resisting temptation: beneficial habits mediate the relationship between self-control and positive life outcomes. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 109 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000026
Gardner, B.: A review and analysis of the use of ‘habit’ in understanding, predicting and influencing health-related behaviour. Health Psychol. Rev. 9(3), 277–295 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2013.876238, pMID: 25207647
Gardner, B., Rebar, A.L.: Habit formation and behavior change (2019). https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.129
Hofmann, S.G., Sawyer, A.T., Witt, A.A., Oh, D.: The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: a meta-analytic review. J. Consult. Clin. Psychol. 78(2), 169–183 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018555
King, K.M., Littlefield, A.K., McCabe, C.J., Mills, K.L., Flournoy, J., Chassin, L.: Longitudinal modeling in developmental neuroimaging research: common challenges, and solutions from developmental psychology. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci. 33, 54–72 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2017.11.009
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C.H.M., Potts, H.W.W., Wardle, J.: How are habits formed: modelling habit formation in the real world. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 40(6), 998–1009 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
McCrae, R.R., Costa Jr., P.T.: The five-factor theory of personality. In: Handbook of personality: theory and research. 3rd ed., pp. 159–181. The Guilford Press, New York (2008)
Neal, D.T., Wood, W., Quinn, J.M.: Habits - a repeat performance. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 15(4), 198–202 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00435.x
Pinheiro, J., Team, R.C.: nlme: linear and nonlinear mixed effects models. R Package Version 3(4), 109 (2006)
Schöne, B., Gruber, T., Graetz, S., Bernhof, M., Malinowski, P.: Mindful breath awareness meditation facilitates efficiency gains in brain networks: a steady-state visually evoked potentials study. Sci. Reports 8(1), 13687 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-32046-5
Stephanidis, C., et al.: Seven HCI grand challenges. Int. J. Human-Comput. Interac. 35(14), 1229–1269 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2019.1619259
Tennant, R., et al.: The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS): development and UK validation (2007). https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-5-63
Torous, J., Kiang, M.V., Lorme, J., Onnela, J.P.: New tools for new research in psychiatry: a scalable and customizable platform to empower data driven smartphone research. JMIR Mental Health 3(2), e16 (2016). https://doi.org/10.2196/mental.5165
Verplanken, B., Orbell, S.: Reflections on past behavior: a self-report index of habit strength. J. Appl. Soc. Psychol. 33, 1313–1330 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2003.tb01951.x
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lewis, R., Liu, Y., Groh, M., Picard, R. (2021). Habit Formation Dynamics: Finding Factors Associated with Building Strong Mindfulness Habits. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Ntoa, S. (eds) HCI International 2021 - Posters. HCII 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1421. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78645-8_44
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78645-8_44
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-78644-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-78645-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)