Action Triggers: What They Are And How They Influence Behavior
In today’s society, everyone wants to acquire good habits. The slogan of the 21st century is that we have to follow a healthy diet, exercise frequently, be very happy, avoid being lazy, and many more.
It is very easy to think that one day we will do it, but it is not so easy when we want to get down to work. We need something to activate us, to direct us to it. We need action triggers.
Next we are going to understand exactly what these triggers are, and we will see what types there are and how we can use them to our advantage.
The action triggers are an exact mental representation of a chain of events, which are located in a certain place, at a specific time or moment of day, and can occur with or without the company of other people. That is, it is imagining everything that influences the performance of a certain action and, therefore, if it is repeated on more than one occasion, it contributes to this action establishing itself as a habit, whether positive or negative.
Exactly describing the steps to be followed and the context in which the action will take place contributes significantly to its occurrence. In fact, there is research that has tried to see how the simple fact of making participants imagine performing a future action increases the chances of it occurring, and below we will see a particular case.
The Gollwitzer and Brandstätter experiment
Psychologists Peter Gollwitzer and Veronika Brandstätter discovered in 1999 what they called the implementation intentions technique which is synonymous with action triggers.
Using university students, they were able to observe the power of describing a future action contributing to it occurring. Their experiment consisted of taking the students of a subject and suggesting that they do an activity to raise their grade. This exercise was to submit a paper about how they would spend Christmas Eve.
So far everything is very normal, but Gollwitzer and Brandstätter asked something different from those who were part of the control group and those who were part of the experimental group. Those in the control group were asked to hand in the work on December 26, that is, after the action had theoretically occurred, while those in the experimental group were asked to define, in the greatest degree of detail, where they would do the work, and submit this description before going on vacation.
So that we understand each other: the control group was asked to hand in the work once they had already done the activity, while the experimental group had to describe, before it was Christmas Eve where they would end up doing it (e.g., I will get up soon on the 25th). to write the work in the library in my city…) and then hand in the work of what they had done that day.
While in the control group, of all those who said they were going to hand in the final work, only 33% ended up doing so, in the experimental group this percentage was higher, about 75%, demonstrating that describing an action in advance and precisely helps it end up happening.
Action triggers work because they anticipate the decision. By anticipating the action that is going to be carried out, being very clear about what, how, where, when and with whom, it helps us to become mentally prepared and motivated to do it. They help create an instant habit.
Five types of action triggers
As we have already seen, Wanting to acquire a good habit and getting down to work implies knowing exactly what the action is that we want to carry out. To help make it happen, it is necessary to know how to describe it with the greatest possible precision, allowing us to properly psych ourselves up and have a greater tendency to do it, as is the previous case of the students of Gollwitzer and Brandstätter.
Below we will look in more depth at the five main types of action triggers, which can contribute, for better or worse, to the acquisition of all types of habits.
1. Time of day
The time of day is, surely, the most important trigger when carrying out a habit. For example, let’s think about the habits we have established in the morning: we get up, have our coffee or cup of tea, eat a croissant, shower, get dressed and go to work or class. The simple fact of successfully getting out of bed already implies carrying out this entire series of actions unconsciously.
But the morning is not the only time of day that influences the way we behave. It may be that, when we arrive from class or work, we associate the arrival time with having to turn on the TV and laze around, or have a snack. We are used to the fact that, at a certain time, we have to behave in a certain way. The time of day induces us to do these habits.
The time of day can be a perfect action trigger for us to carry out actions that bring us some type of benefit. For example, if we are interested in acquiring more vocabulary in English, we can try associating breakfast time with picking up a dictionary and trying to learn ten new words. At first it will cost us, of course, but As the days go by, there will be a time when eating breakfast will make us open the book unconsciously.
2. Place
Let’s imagine that we are in the kitchen and we see a plate of freshly baked cookies on the table. We eat them. The reason? They were there. Did we plan to eat them before entering the kitchen? No, we didn’t even know they had been made. Why were we going to the kitchen then? We were going for a glass of water, the plate was the culprit that made us decide to eat the cookies.
With this example we can understand the importance that the simple fact that something is there can induce us to do a certain behavior, in this case eating the plate of cookies. Being in the right place at the right time influences our behavior, making a good or bad decision without even having thought about it for just a few seconds. The environment or place is one of the most powerful triggers for action, despite the fact that it is not given due importance.
In every room of our house, be it our bedroom or desk, there may be stimuli that prevent us from starting to study, for example. Also, in each place in our home we have certain ways of behaving, such as spending hours playing video games in our bedroom, eating cookies in the kitchen or watching TV in the living room. They are “contaminated” with our previous behaviors.
That is why it has been seen that the best way to try to establish a new habit is to do it in a new place. For example, if we want to study and there is no way to concentrate at home, let’s go to the library or a coffee shop where we have never been with our friends. As these are new places for us, we do not have the precedent of having carried out actions that hinder our study. They are places that foster a more productive environment.
3. Predecessor event
Many habits are conditioned by something that has happened before, or by a stimulus that may seem harmless to our overall behavior but that influences us in such a way that it can lead to the failure of our purposes.
For example, and a classic, is to pick up the cell phone when it vibrates and, immediately afterwards, we look at who sent us the last message. We not only look at the message, since we take the opportunity to look at Instagram, Twitter and curiosities of the last page we visited. And that wastes our time, especially if we were doing something important where we shouldn’t let any distractions interrupt us. The vibration works on us like Pavlov’s famous bell with his dogs.
We can use this conditioning of our behavior in the face of a certain stimulus to our advantage. For example, we want to walk more, and a good way to do this is to go up and down stairs. We can propose that, if the elevator is not on our same floor, we do not call it, and we go down the stairs. This is how we do a little leg.
4. Emotions
You don’t need to be a psychologist to know how being in a bad mood makes us make bad decisions, which can eventually become bad habits. For example, there are people who, when they get stressed, tend to go to the refrigerator to look for something ultra-sweet, like a chocolate bar, a flan, or a pastry. Others choose to smoke like a drummer or spend hours watching Netflix or videos of presses crushing things on YouTube.
It is clear that being sad, angry, stressed or in a bad mood in general makes us do unproductive things. It is because of that The mood, as a trigger for a (bad) action, is something quite complicated to use for our own benefit. Normally we like to do productive things when we are in a good mood, while if we are a little down or angry the last thing we think about is studying, playing sports or eating a good diet.
This is something difficult to control. Although we can make a great effort to smile at life in the face of adversity, we are human beings, not soulful and emotionless organisms. We feel, and each feeling influences our behavior, for better or worse. It is what it is.
However, not all bad news. We can try to think coolly when we are angry and, instead of taking it out on the world, channel the tension by doing sports especially one that involves lifting weights (e.g., gym machines), punching (e.g., boxing), or, if preferred, makes you tired (e.g., spinning).
5. Other people
It is not at all surprising that our companies influence our behavior and, in the worst cases, the saying that it is better to be alone than in bad company is true. It has happened to all of us that we don’t usually drink but, when we are with a friend, we can’t help but order a beer. In other cases, when we are watching what we eat, being with other friends does not invite us to order a salad for dinner. We could put many more cases, but the idea is already being understood: others influence our decisions.
But not everything is bad. On the contrary, setting out to do things with friends or family can be a factor that triggers the realization of what, over time, will be a good habit. For example, let’s imagine that we have joined the gym with our roommate and, every time he goes, we want to accompany him. Then in the gym, if you are also good at exercising, it can motivate us to try new machines and improve ourselves. It is a case in which another person influences us positively.
Before finishing and deciding the habit to start
Whether choosing one of the previously explained action triggers, or being aware of how these influence our behavior, it is very important to specify what the desired habit is, or the specific action, that we want to acquire. It is not much use to propose to be very healthy, study or meditate without first specifying what exactly these actions mean. It is also very important to specify the trigger or triggers that we consider contribute to us doing the action in question.
For example, let’s say we want to eat healthier. Very good. Let’s ask ourselves the following question: what is healthy? Of course, here we already have a question to solve. Eating a sad lettuce and starving all day is not the same as eating a delicious and varied salad made with lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, a can of tuna, a splash of balsamic oil and walnuts, for later. Accompany it with a portion of grilled chicken breast accompanied by a little rice and carrots, finishing it off with a delicious fruit salad.
In the case of the miserable lettuce, we have a very vague and general idea of what it means to eat healthy, and we have not imagined ourselves doing the action nor thinking about all the necessary steps to start being healthy. In the second case, on the other hand, we have done an exercise of imagination, we have thought about everything necessary and that we consider essential to carry out the action, and this is, in essence, as if we had already done the action previously. It is like a mental simulation of the habit to be acquired.
