390: How to Break Bad Habits with Wendy Wood
Age Less / Live More
Lucas Rockwood
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2019
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You could still smoke indoors when I moved to Spain in 2009. Thankfully, it was banned in 2010 as part of an on-going anti-tobacco campaign that has since failed miserably. Fifteen years ago, 32% of people smoked. Today, 34% smoke. Somehow, the US has managed to get smoking rates down to 14%, and yet, even with a nationwide campaign, consumption here goes up. Why?
My guest on this week’s podcast has spent much of her career studying and dissecting human habit formation and change. The reasons why you do what you do are not obvious and not even conscious, so changing them requires a deeper understanding of self.
Listen & Learn:
- How the US anti-smoking campaign was so successful
- Why the “5 a Day” healthy eating campaign flopped
- The small role that motivation plans in your habits
- What mechanisms are at play when habits are formed
- The roles of friction, cues, and beliefs in habit formation
Links & Resources:
About Our Guest:
Wendy Wood is a psychologist and the Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC where she has been a faculty member since 2009. Her primary research contributions are in habits and behavior change, along with the psychology of gender. She is the author of a new book Good Habits, Bad Habits.
Nutritional Tip of the Week:
- Meal Timing
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I first moved to Spain in 2009 and believe it or not you could still smoke indoors in |
| 0:07.8 | Tappas bars in restaurants and bars at night they were filled with smoke and in 2010 they finally banned it and it was |
| 0:14.2 | great everyone said hooray even the smokers didn't want this cloud of |
| 0:17.5 | disgusting smoke I didn't even like to go out at night it was just terrible you come |
| 0:21.6 | home smelling like the 1990s, it was all very retro. |
| 0:25.3 | They finally banned smoking, everyone was really happy, and it was part of a long campaign |
| 0:29.6 | that actually started in 2005 here in Spain to reduce tobacco consumption and back then there was |
| 0:36.0 | about 32 33% of people smoked and now there's more. That's right you heard heard me right, it has failed. Banding smoking |
| 0:44.6 | indoors, increasing taxes, all of this stuff has totally failed here in Spain |
| 0:48.7 | where now 34% more than one-third of the population age 15 to 64 smokes. |
| 0:55.0 | It's crazy. |
| 0:55.8 | Why is it not working? |
| 0:56.8 | On the flip side, why is the US working so so well? |
| 0:59.8 | Why is there 14% of people smoking and in many areas single digit percentage |
| 1:05.2 | people smoking how can it be so successful there and such a fail here I don't |
| 1:10.1 | know the answer to that some people theorize that it's the readiness, the |
| 1:13.7 | availability. There still are cigarette machines around. There's very little ID |
| 1:18.8 | checks. It's socially acceptable for a couple of 12 year olds to sit on the corner and smoke |
| 1:24.0 | no one will call their parents or smack them over the head like they might in some |
| 1:27.4 | other places. Those are my theories as an outsider but hey what do I know? My |
| 1:31.6 | guest on this week's show does know. She studies habit. |
| 1:34.5 | We know why bad habits form, how to form good habits, the role of friction and cues and |
... |
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