Habits can be created

Nir Eyal’s book Hooked (2014) presents a frame to understand how behavioral habits can be forged. According to Eyal, the first step in this process is a trigger. This trigger can be external or internal. Exposing individuals to the existence of a product or service (or information for that matter) is an external trigger. It should come with a call to action in order to get the individuals to act. Negative emotions by individuals are internal triggers. Boredom is such a negative emotion. Others are for instance: discomfort, anxiety, loneliness, frustration, confusion and indecisiveness. These negative emotions prompt people to action, to try and lessen the unpleasant impact of the emotions. The second step is the desired acting upon the trigger. This action should be easier than thinking. If the action following the trigger is to become a habit it should be like scratching an itch, in which the itch is the trigger. The third step is the reward. The most effective type of rewards is variable rewards. Whenever the outcome of an action is unpredictable, the action gets boring less quickly. The gambling industry is based on this principle. The fourth step is to repeat the process from trigger to reward over and over. Slowly individuals are not making conscious decisions anymore, their reactions to the triggers are becoming automated as habits.