In the crowded and busy arena of obesity and fat studies, there is a lack of attention to the lived experiences of people, how and why they eat what they do, and how people in cross-cultural settings ...understand risk, health, and bodies. This volume addresses the lacuna by drawing on ethnographic methods and analytical emic explorations in order to consider the impact of cultural difference, embodiment, and local knowledge on understanding obesity. It is through this reconstruction of how obesity and fatness are studied and understood that a new discussion will be introduced and a new set of analytical explorations about obesity research and the effectiveness of obesity interventions will be established.
Efforts to guide peoples' behavior toward environmental sustainability, good health, or new products have emphasized informational and attitude change strategies. There is evidence that changing ...attitudes leads to changes in behavior, yet this approach takes insufficient account of the nature and operation of habits, which form boundary conditions for attitude-directed interventions. Integration of research on attitudes and habits might enable investigators to identify when and how behavior change strategies will be most effective. How might attitudinally driven behavior change be consolidated into lasting habits? How do habits protect the individual against the vicissitudes of attitudes and temptations and promote goal achievement? How might attitudinal approaches aiming to change habits be improved by capitalizing on habit discontinuities and strategic planning? When and how might changing or creating habit architecture shape habits directly? A systematic approach to these questions might help move behavior change efforts from attitude change strategies to habit change strategies.
The Palaeozoic bryozoan Order Fenestrata is represented almost exclusively by erect unilaminate forms, most of which consist of a fan-shaped, conical or spiral reticulate meshwork. Fewer taxa ...developed pinnate or branching growth habits, and encrusting or bifoliate colonies occurred only exceptionally. Fenestrate disparity apparently peaked and then declined within the Devonian with the appearance of singular encrusting, bifoliate and large branching-conical morphologies in the Emsian and their decline in diversity in the Eifelian, together with the proliferation and morphological diversification of superstructures lying above the meshwork. In contrast, conventional reticulate and pinnate growth habits show a wider stratigraphical range and geographical distribution. Colony shapes are interpreted in terms of zooid-generated feeding currents; the most common morphologies are inferred to have developed more effective unidirectional feeding currents. The ephemeral Devonian encrusting, bifoliate and branching-conical fenestrates, all of them with superstructures, have features that hindered or prevented unidirectional water flow. Except for the subcolonies of Ernstipora, there is no evidence of chimneys or maculae in fenestrates such as those commonly present in other bryozoan groups with these habits, so it can be concluded that these fenestrate forms did not develop bidirectional currents that would have enhanced the efficiency of feeding activity. Unidirectional feeding currents were universal in Palaeozoic fenestrates; optimization of colony shape for colony-wide currents was a major factor limiting the morphological disparity within this group of bryozoans.
•Occurrence of new, rare colony shapes increased fenestrate disparity in the Devonian.•No evidence of maculae indicating bidirectional flow has been found in fenestrates.•Morphology of some rare forms reduced efficiency of unidirectional feeding currents.•Interactions between fenestrate colony shape and feeding currents limited disparity.
Consuming the inedible MacClancy, Jeremy; Henry, C. J. K; Macbeth, Helen M
2007, 2007., 20071230, 2007-12-01, Volume:
6
eBook, Book
Everyday, millions of people eat earth, clay, nasal mucus, and similar substances. Yet food practices like these are strikingly understudied in a sustained, interdisciplinary manner. This book aims ...to correct this neglect. Contributors, utilizing anthropological, nutritional, biochemical, psychological and health-related perspectives, examine in a rigorously comparative manner the consumption of foods conventionally regarded as inedible by most Westerners. This book is both timely and significant because nutritionists and health care professionals are seldom aware of anthropological information on these food practices, and vice versa. Ranging across diversity of disciplines Consuming the Inedible surveys scientific and local views about the consequences - biological, mineral, social or spiritual - of these food practices, and probes to what extent we can generalize about them.
COVID-19 Prevention via the Science of Habit Formation Harvey, Allison G.; Armstrong, Courtney C.; Callaway, Catherine A. ...
Current directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society,
04/2021, Volume:
30, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to claim lives worldwide. We propose that the science of habit formation offers strategies to increase adherence to COVID-19 prevention behaviors and ...has the potential to be lifesaving, particularly for high-risk groups. Eight elements of habit formation are highlighted here: addressing incorrect beliefs, setting goals, devising an action plan, establishing contextual cues, adding reinforcement, engaging in repetition, aiming for automaticity, and recognizing that change is difficult. In addition, we offer a set of strategies for forming new habits and eliminating existing habits to contain the spread of COVID-19. These strategies are derived from habit-formation principles and behavior-change techniques and can inform future research on treatment development. With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging, there is currently an urgent need to jump-start the state of knowledge on habit-formation processes and interventions.
This study investigates a popular theory of tourist motivation – the travel career pattern – and contrasts it against an alternative explanation – that childhood travel habits repeat throughout life. ...The key distinction is that the travel career pattern predicts change, whereas habit predicts repetition. This study tests competing hypotheses, using self-reported childhood and adulthood travel experiences, behaviours and motivations. Results point to childhood travel behaviour repeating as adult travel behaviour, supporting the key role of habit as a driver of travel behaviour. These findings represent a paradigm shift in our theoretical understanding of determinants of travel behaviour, which implies that habits could be used as leverage points for behavioural change in tourism.
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•We re-examine the travel career pattern for its validity.•Empirical results do not support the key hypotheses of the travel career pattern.•We propose, instead, that childhood travel behaviour drives adult travel behaviour.•Empirical results support childhood travel behaviour driving adult travel behaviour.•Childhood travel behaviours could be leveraged to change adult travel behaviours.
Habitual behavior is often hard to change because of a lack of self-monitoring skills. Digital technologies offer an unprecedented chance to facilitate self-monitoring by delivering feedback on ...undesired habitual behavior. This review analyzed the results of 72 studies in which feedback from digital technology attempted to disrupt and change undesired habits. A vast majority of these studies found that feedback through digital technology is an effective way to disrupt habits, regardless of target behavior or feedback technology used.
Unfortunately, methodological issues limit our confidence in the findings of all but 14 of the 50 studies with quantitative measurements in this review. Furthermore, only 4 studies tested for (and only 3 of those 4 found) sustained habit change, and it remains unclear how feedback from digital technology is moderated by receiver states and traits, as well as feedback characteristics such as feedback sign, comparison, tailoring, modality, frequency, timing and duration. We conclude with recommendations for new research directions.
•Feedback through digital technology can disrupt undesirable habits.•However, it remains unclear whether this disruption leads to durable habit change.•The effect of feedback characteristics and user states and traits remain understudied.•Findings from this review can be used to inform the development of feedback-based products.
Objective
The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between habit strength and clinical features of anorexia nervosa (AN). Habit strength, separate from intention, relates to the ...persistence of behavior, and is measured by the Self‐Report Habit Index (SRHI). We hypothesized that habit strength would be greater among individuals with AN than healthy controls (HC) and that habit strength would be associated with duration and severity of illness.
Method
Participants were 116 women with AN (n = 69) and HC (n = 47) who completed the SRHI, the Eating Disorder Examination‐Questionnaire (EDE‐Q), and a multi‐item laboratory meal. The SRHI assessed four domains and these subscales were averaged for the total score.
Results
Individuals with AN demonstrated significantly greater habit strength than HC in the total score (t114 = 7.00, p < .01), and within each domain (restrictive eating, compensatory behavior, delay of eating, and rituals). Total SRHI score was significantly associated with EDE‐Q scores for both AN and HC groups (rAN = .59, pAN = <.001; rHC = .32, pHC = .030). Among patients, there was a significant association between SRHI and duration of illness (r = .38, p = .001). There was no significant association between SRHI and caloric intake (rAN = −.20, pAN = .10; rHC = −.25, pHC = .09).
Discussion
Habit strength was related to chronicity and severity of AN, suggesting that habit formation may play an important role in illness. These data suggest avenues for mechanism research and treatment development.
Active inference and learning Friston, Karl; FitzGerald, Thomas; Rigoli, Francesco ...
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews,
September 2016, 2016-Sep, 2016-09-00, 20160901, Volume:
68
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Optimal behaviour is quintessentially belief based.Behaviour can be described as optimising expected free energy.Expected free energy entails pragmatic and epistemic value.Habits are learned by ...observing one⿿s own goal directed behaviour.Habits are then selected online during active inference.
This paper offers an active inference account of choice behaviour and learning. It focuses on the distinction between goal-directed and habitual behaviour and how they contextualise each other. We show that habits emerge naturally (and autodidactically) from sequential policy optimisation when agents are equipped with state-action policies. In active inference, behaviour has explorative (epistemic) and exploitative (pragmatic) aspects that are sensitive to ambiguity and risk respectively, where epistemic (ambiguity-resolving) behaviour enables pragmatic (reward-seeking) behaviour and the subsequent emergence of habits. Although goal-directed and habitual policies are usually associated with model-based and model-free schemes, we find the more important distinction is between belief-free and belief-based schemes. The underlying (variational) belief updating provides a comprehensive (if metaphorical) process theory for several phenomena, including the transfer of dopamine responses, reversal learning, habit formation and devaluation. Finally, we show that active inference reduces to a classical (Bellman) scheme, in the absence of ambiguity.
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