Expert Meeting on Healthy Habits: Habit Formation and Habit Change

On June 16, 2020, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education’s Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences (BBCSS) convened an expert meeting to elucidate the mechanisms of habit formation and habit change as they relate to adoption and maintenance of health behaviors. The expert meeting aimed to clarify the roles of affect, reinforcement learning and motivation, memory, goal-directed behavior, and context in shaping behavior change; and specify the conditions where each mechanism prevails to help improve the design of future behavior change interventions. A meeting summary is available (PDF, 445K).