Continuing Education for Psychologists

GOOD HABITS, BAD HABITS
The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick

Wendy Wood reviews three decades of her own and others' research on habit formation and change and applies it to actual personal and clinical change. Forty-three per cent of most peoples' days are composed of habitual behaviors. Habits are notoriously difficult to change. Wood analyzes how habits are built and realistic ways to change them.

By explaining how our brains are wired to respond to rewards, receive cues from our surroundings, and shut down when faced with too much friction, Wood skillfully dissects habit formation, demonstrating how we can take advantage of this knowledge to form better habits. Her clear and incisive work shows why willpower alone is woefully inadequate when we're working toward building the life we truly want, and offers real hope for those who want to make positive change.

Wendy Wood is a UK-born psychologist who is the Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at University of Southern California, where she has been a faculty member since 2009. She is also the Distinguished Visiting Professor at INSEAD Business School in Paris.

"In Good Habits, Bad Habits . . . the social psychologist Wendy Wood refutes both [William] James's determinism and glib exhortations to be proactive, and seeks to give the general reader more realistic ideas for how to break habits. Drawing on her work in the field, she sees the task of sustaining positive behaviors and quelling negative ones as involving an interplay of decisions and unconscious factors . . . Even people who score high on self-control questionnaires may owe their apparent virtue to situational factors rather than to sheer fortitude."
-- Jerome Groopman, The New Yorker

"Many authors have written about habits . . . but Wood is also a premier scientist in psychology, working on how habits affect and are affected by the human mind. Top tip: Willpower isn't enough. But through her original research, Wood explains what does work."
--Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post

"No one has studied how habits form and influence behavior better than Wendy Wood. More importantly for readers, no one has done a better job of showing how to change negative habits into powerful, helpful versions."
-- Robert B. Cialdini, author of Influence and Pre-Suasion

"[Wendy Wood] eloquently explains current research on the role habits play in everyday activities such as snacking, exercising, and commuting . . . Her insightful, data-driven advice includes tactics such as 'stacking'–grouping desired behaviors together with already-established behavioral patterns to incorporate actions into routines. Wood's research and perspective on the malleability of habits will bring hope to any reader looking to create long-term behavioral change."
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)