curious.. @HarmonyAlexandria are you also kind’a depressed?
I agree, @ABoyNamedBoobs03, i was just thinking about your question and came back to give a very simple example of habits leading to problems.
Imagine a button with a cover. as soon as the cover is lifted you are to hit it as fast as you can. You are being timed for reaction speed:
– First time, the cover is lifted, BAM you hit it. maybe it took you 0.92 seconds
– Second time, BAM!.. 0.71 seconds. you’re getting better at the practice
– Third time, BAM!.. 0.68 seconds. you are approaching your average speed
– Fourth time, BAM!.. 0.67 seconds. this is actually kind’a fun
– Fifth time, BAM-SPLASH! you end up in the hospital because we replaced the Button with a sea urchin without telling you.
Your hitting the sea urchin was involuntary. You formed a habit (in this case, involving “violence” in the form of hitting a target as hard/fast as you can) for a particular situation. Just before hitting the sea urchin, you probably saw it for just a second but just weren’t quick enough to stop yourself.
Another tester perhaps successfully stopped himself from hitting the sea urchin.
Another tester still perhaps didn’t even realize the button had been switched until after he saw that his hand was shooting blood.
A few weeks later after you’re healed up. We ask you to come test again. You politely refuse.
The point is, we have habits yes, but once we learn that a habit is no longer useful to us we find ways to cease it. Sometimes we’re quick to react to new information, Sometimes we’ve invested too much into a bad decision already to prevent the repercussions and Sometimes the new information just doesn’t permeate our thoughts and hence fails to affect our decisions at all.
In another test, we could try telling the subject 1 second before lifting the cover that the the button will be replaced with a dangerous item to hit. Chances are, there would be less hospital visits in these examples. This is prevention.