List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Part I The Habit Machine: Why We Get Stuck 1
1. What Is a Habit? 3
The Poet of Habits 4
The Zoo of Habits 5
Habits and Goals 7
Why Do We Have Habits? 10
Understanding Behavior 11
A Road Map for Understanding Habits and Behavior Change 12
2. The Brain's Habit Machinery 16
A System for Conscious Memory 19
Enter the Lizard Brain 23
What Are the Basal Ganglia? 26
Dopamine: It's Complicated 30
Dopamine and Brain Plasticity 34
What Does Dopamine Mean? 36
What about Pleasure? 40
Selecting Actions in the Striatum 42
3. Once a Habit, Always a Habit 45
Old Habits Never Die 46
The Transition to Mindlessness 48
Becoming One: Habits as Chunked Actions 50
Trigger Warning: How Cues Trigger Habits 52
Can't Look Away: Rewarding Stimuli Capture Attention 55
A Recipe for Stickiness 58
4. The Battle for Me 60
A Competition in the Brain? 61
Memory System Interactions in Humans 64
Formalizing the Goal-Habit Distinction 66
Model-Based versus Model-Free Reinforcement Learning 72
Can Goals become Habitual? 77
5. Self-Control: The Greatest Human Strength? 81
What's Up Front? 83
Why Is the Prefrontal Cortex Special? 86
Holding Information in Mind 90
The Waiting Is the Hardest Part 97
Now or Later? 102
Two Minds in One Brain? 106
Controlling Our Impulses 110
Stopping Ourselves 114
The Rise and Fall of Willpower 119
6. Addiction: Habits Gone Bad 123
The Intoxicating Allure of Drugs 123
"This Is Your Brain on Drugs. Any Questions?" 126
The Transition from Impulse to Habit 130
Stress and Addiction 134
Is Addiction Really about Habits? 137
"My Drug of Choice Is Food" 138
Digital Addiction? 144
Why Do Only Some People Become Addicted? 147
Part II Coming Unstuck: The Science of Behavior Change 151
7. Toward a New Science of Behavior Change 153
Behavior Change as a Public Health Problem 153
A New Science of Behavior Change 155
A New Approach to Behavior Change 157
Targets for Intervention 159
8. Planning for Success: Keys to Successful Behavior Change 161
The Architecture of Choice 161
Loss Aversion and Framing 163
Make Rules, Not Decisions 165
Trigger Warning: Intervening on Habits 166
Mindfulness: Hype or Help? 170
Can Self-Control Be Boosted? 171
Training Inhibition 174
Envisioning Change 175
Summing Up 177
9. Hacking Habits: New Tools for Behavior Change 179
Can Bad Habits Be Erased? 179
"I Forgot That I Was a Smoker" 185
Optogenetics in Humans? 187
A Neurochemical "Goldilocks Zone": Drugs to Improve Executive Function 189
Toward Personalized Behavior Change 190
10. Epilogue 194
Summing Up 195
From Individual to Societal Change 198
Notes 201
Index 213