You Can't Teach a Human New Tricks
Nov. 15, 2006 — -- Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.
Yeah, right.
That old bromide doesn't hold up today, and in fact it never did. We are creatures of habit, the unspoken rules that govern our behavior.
Repetition has made us what we are, both for the good and the bad, and those comfortable old rules are so hard to break that we seldom change our ways.
Even when we know some of our habits can be deadly, we find it hard to change. Scientists from many disciplines have looked at why we continue to do things we know are harmful, and they've come up with various reasons, most of which are obvious to anyone who has taken the plunge into the abyss of self improvement.
One recent study shows the near universal affliction of some bad habits on specific communities, and the inability of the people to do much about it.
Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada studied residents of two aboriginal communities in the far north. They found that most ranked lifestyle habits as far more dangerous than such things as pollution. Most ranked cigarette smoking, for example, as "very dangerous."
And nearly everyone in both communities ranked risks associated with alcohol as "very dangerous."
Those findings led Cindy Jardine, an assistant professor of rural sociology, to conclude that it doesn't do a lot of good to tell people that something is bad. Chances are they already know that.
But why can't they change?
Why, to follow her research a step further, does alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking continue to plague the natives of villages in the far north, if they already know it's bad? Why, for that matter, do those habits continue to persist in most sociological settings, among the rich as well as the poor?
One obvious explanation is that cigarettes and alcohol are chemically addictive. But volumes of research point to more complex reasons.
According to researchers at several universities, reported in the journal Psychological Science, bad habits (as well as the good habits) become automatic, learned behaviors.
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