Research on changing habits - implications for smoking cessation

[WhiteHighlights]

I broke the link because the article references a study on an ECF banned substance used by soldiers in Vietnam, but the article relates it to the difficulties in breaking the smoking habit.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/05/ 371894919

So researchers studied how to organize public health campaigns, or how to use social pressure to change attitudes. And, says David Neal, another psychologist who looks at behavior change, these strategies did work. "They do work for a certain subset of behaviors," he says. "They work for behaviors that people don't perform too frequently."

If you want, for example, to increase the number of people who donate blood, a public campaign can work well. But if you want them to quit smoking, campaigns intended to change attitudes are often less effective.

Once a behavior had been repeated a lot, especially if the person does it in the same setting, you can successfully change what people want to do. But if they've done it enough, their behavior doesn't follow their intentions," Neal explains.

Neal says this has to do with the way that our physical environments come to shape our behavior.

"People, when they perform a behavior a lot — especially in the same environment, same sort of physical setting — outsource the control of the behavior to the environment," Neal says.

I believe this supports why vaping is so effective in reducing/quitting smoking - it replaces the smoking behavior and explains why so many other strategies (gum & patches) don't work well because they don't deal with the environmental triggers and habit. Many of us know these things and have said so from our experience.

I didn't realize there was research out there about this significant factor and that there was a shift in the science of behavior change.

 

[philoshop]

That's a big part of Harm Reduction, and a concept that is completely unacceptable to the ANTZ.

 

[DrMA]

The smoker-demonization hatespeak by tobacco control has reached grotesque levels:
https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/tobacco-control-is-driven-by-hatred/

Recent incident triggered by TC hatespeak qualified as hate crime:
Friends shocked by attack on judge: 'She's an icon' - Chicago Tribune

TC hatespeak promotes acts of terrorism - they should all be rounded up and sent to Gitmo:
X Nomavayi | The Smokers' Graveyard