Habits are not goal-dependent: Commentary on Buabang et al. (2023).

Abstract

People sometimes commit action slips by absentmindedly repeating unwanted responses, such as entering an old password instead of the current one. Most accounts hold that such slips demonstrate stimulus-response habits in which familiar contexts directly trigger well-practiced but now-incorrect responses. In contrast, Buabang et al. (2023) argue that action slips arise due to the continued influence of old, no longer accurate goal outcomes. In a reanalysis, we show that Buabang et al.'s participants actually provide striking evidence of goal-independent S-R habits: They correctly repeated well-practiced responses despite reporting incorrect goals. We also show that Buabang et al. misinterpreted the results of their mediation analyses by overlooking the direct influence of stimuli on responses. Understanding how habits work is important because habit change interventions are unlikely to succeed with goal-directed strategies that overlook context cues' direct activation of practiced responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).