Friday 2 March 2012

What kind of people are most open to changing their habits?

What was it like the first time you went overseas by yourself?
My first overseas adventure was to Germany in December 2007. I spent 6 weeks in the south of Germany, renting an apartment right next to a corner of the Black Forest. I was there to ski, but as it turned out, there was no snow! So instead I went running. Every morning I'd wake up, put my long johns on and go for a run. During the day, I'd walk around town by myself or just lay back and watch German TV, before going for another run in the evening (yes a lot of running!). Pretty soon I got desperately lonely. One night, I was feeling so upset that I called my parents from my mobile, not caring about the massive bill that I'd get. I was homesick and all I wanted was to hear their voices. I missed my room. I missed the Australian weather. I missed talking to people in English.

Homesickness
After that experience, I had this theory that whenever I went through a big change in my life, I'd soon have a longing for the comforts of home. I started to expect that when hurled into a new situation (either by force or by my own volition), I would retreat from the new experiences on offer and fall back on what I was used to.

As it turns out though, that belief was rubbish when I looked at it objectively. Every time I travelled or went through some major life change (e.g. starting university), even though I often felt like I was falling back on old habits and old comforts and closing myself off to new experiences, my actions painted a very different picture. For example, that same Winter when I was in Germany almost in tears as I called my parents, I had started a new exercise routine, I was sampling a bunch of new foods, I told a girl I loved her, I drank beer for the first time, I learnt how to pick up horse poop, I made a bunch of new friends, I listened to new music and took on many other changes in my life. If I counted up the number of changes I made in my life over those six weeks, it would be immediately clear that I had become more open to change not less open.

The comfort food fallacy
That mistaken belief I had is apparently pretty common. During the height of the GFC, chef and Food Network television host George Duran said, “It’s a natural human habit to turn to comfort foods in times like these” (Parker 2008). However, in a neat series of experiments, Wood (2010) proves that in actual fact, it's a natural human habit to turn to exotic foods in times like these.

Experiment one: do people prefer comfort food in changing times?
In this experiment, Wood first made the 203 American participants do 30-40 minutes of unrelated busy work, so they couldn't figure out the purpose of the study and then gave them a questionnaire that asked them (amongst other things)  whether they were going through significant life changes. Then he asked them to choose a prize: American chips (the comfort food) or British crisps (the exotic, spicy snack). 

The results showed that the people going through major changes in their life were more likely (p = 0.05) to choose the British chips.

Conclusion: people prefer exotic food when their lives are changing rapidly

Experiment two: are people aware of their own preferences for comfort food?
Next Wood asked people to predict what choices two hypothetical people would make: Taylor (who's about to move out of home) and Brook (isn't going anywhere). In all cases, the participants (n = 127) predicted the opposite to how they would have behaved in experiment one. They overwhelmingly believed that Taylor would choose the American chips and Brook would choose the British crisps. When Wood only looked at the participants experiencing a lot of change, he found that they were even more firm in their belief that Taylor would choose the comfort food.

He also did a self-prediction study where he asked 167 students to imagine that they were about to have a really stressful, tumultuous week and then predict whether they would be more or less likely to want to have a comfort food dinner on Friday night. And you guessed it..83% of people reckoned they'd go for the comfort food.

Conclusion: people are really bad at predicting how they would behave.

Experiment three: is it just comfort food or is it comfort anything?
Wood then asked 170 people whether they'd choose the familiar or the unfamiliar option in five different categories (deodorant, music, juice, comedy films, running venues). Yet again, the high change group chose the exotic options (p = 0.03), though this effect evaporated when they were asked  to reflect on why they would choose each option. 

What does it all mean?

The takeaway message is that people are more likely to change their habits when they are in the midst of major changes in their life. (e.g. they move cities or find a new job). I've got a great metaphor here: people are like tents. Their habits are the guide ropes that anchor them to the terrain. Bad habits are anchored at crazy angles that distort the tent and make it very uncomfortable to sleep in and very vulnerable to collapse. 

All of a sudden, a tremendous gust of wind (a significant life change) swoops down and blows the tent. If the tent isn't secured well (maybe because the guide ropes are skewed in strange directions), then the whole tent will collapse and all of the guide ropes will be yanked out of the ground. Then the person inside will rush out to repeg the tent and depending on how they respond to change, they might be methodical and carefully plant the pegs in the most protective manner possible. Or they might peg them higgeldy piggeldy in any which way. Whatever happens, the guide ropes (habits) are probably going to end up stretched in different directions to where they were before.

Implications for marketing
Looking for early adopters? Target people who have recently moved into a new apartment, started a new job or are going through some kind of major life change. This is why men buy Ferraris during their mid life crises:P

For CoCoRide, it would make sense to reach out to new housing developments and offer to set up a ridesharing system for the people who move in.

Implications for individuals
Be aware that if you've put a lot of work into building positive habits (a healthy diet or exercise regime for example), there's a good chance these habits will get broken when your life changes. This was clear for me when I went up to Brisbane recently to visit my PhD supervisor and research group. I picked up some really productive study habits (e.g. using RescueTime.com to block out access to email and facebook in the morning when I wanted to work). However, I lost the habit of regularly journalling and riding my bike to get around. 

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