ArticleBMC psychology2015
Do habits always override intentions? Pitting unhealthy snacking habits against snack-avoidance intentions.
Article in BMC psychology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Role of Psychological Factors in Young Adult Snacking: Exploring the Intention-Behaviour Gap.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Psychosocial determinants of healthy sleep habits in adults with type 1 and type 2 diabetes.Health psychology and behavioral medicine · 2024Article
- Use IT again? Dynamic roles of habit, intention and their interaction on continued system use by individuals in utilitarian, volitional contexts.European journal of information systems : an official journal of the Operational Research Society · 2024Article
- A Dual-Process Model Applied to Two Health-Promoting Nutrition Behaviours.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- What influences the selection of contextual cues when starting a new routine behaviour? An exploratory study.BMC psychology · 2020Article
- Relating goal-directed behaviour to grazing in persons with obesity with and without eating disorder features.Journal of eating disorders · 2020Article
- How we are misinterpreting physical activity intention - behavior relations and what to do about it.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundHabit is defined as a process whereby an impulse towards behaviour is automatically initiated upon encountering a setting in which the behaviour has been performed in the past. A central tenet of habit theory is that habit overrides intentional tendencies in directing behaviour, such that as habit strength increases, intention becomes less predictive of behaviour. Yet, evidence of this effect has been methodologically limited by modelling the impact of positively-correlated habits and intentions. This study sought to test the effect of habits for unhealthy snacking on the relationship between intentions to avoid unhealthy snacks and snack intake.
methodsMethods were chosen to match those used in studies that have shown habit-intention interactions. 239 adults completed valid and reliable measures of habitual snacking and intention to avoid snacking at baseline, and a self-report measure of snack intake two weeks later. Data were analysed using multiple regression.
resultsWhile both habit and intention independently predicted snack intake, no interaction between habit and intention was found.
conclusionsNo support was found for the expected moderating impact of habit on the intention-behaviour relationship, indicating that individuals with intentions can act on those intentions despite having habits. Previous evidence of a habit-intention interaction effect may be unreliable. A growing literature indicates that habitual tendencies can be inhibited, albeit with difficulty. Habits and intentions may vary in the influence they exert over discrete behaviour instances. While the aggregation of behaviours across instances and individuals used in our study reflects the dominant methodology in habit research, it precludes examination of effects of in-situ habits and intentions. More sophisticated data collection and analysis methods may be needed to better understand potential habit-intention interactions.
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