Making health a habit: Progress in habit theory and its application in real-world settings

Abstract

An expert meeting convened at the European Health Psychology Society conference in 2019 concluded that, to develop effective habit-based interventions, more knowledge was needed regarding how habit manifests in health behaviour, how to make and break habits, and how to develop optimal interventions. The articles included in this Collection represent remarkable progress in providing this knowledge. In this editorial, we discuss the various advances that these studies offer in understanding how to personalise and contextualise habit-based interventions, identifying which strategies appear effective for making and breaking habits, and highlighting constructs that may operate interdependently with habit to drive behaviour change maintenance. To maintain momentum in the development and application of habit theory for health, we encourage researchers to make greater use of artificial intelligence, both to learn more about habitual behaviour and to develop adaptive, user-centred interventions.