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{{short description|Social psychologist}}
{{short description|Social psychologist}}
'''Wendy Wood''' is a UK-born psychologist who is the Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at University of Southern California, where she has been a faculty member since 2009. She previously served as vice dean of social sciences at the [[University of Southern California academics#Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences|Dornsife College of the University of Southern California]]. Her primary research contributions are in [[habit]]s and [[Behavioural change theories|behavior change]] along with the [[Gender psychology|psychology of gender]].
'''Wendy Wood''' is a UK-born psychologist who is the Provost Professor Emerita of Psychology and Business at University of Southern California, where she has been a faculty member since 2009. She previously served as vice dean of social sciences at the [[University of Southern California academics#Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences|Dornsife College of the University of Southern California]]. Her primary research contributions are in [[habit]]s and [[Behavioural change theories|behavior change]] along with the [[Gender psychology|psychology of gender]].


She is the author of the popular science book, ''Good Habits, Bad Habits,'' released in October 2019. This book was featured in the Next Big Idea Club and was reviewed in the New Yorker.<ref>Can Brain Science Help us Break Bad Habits? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/can-brain-science-help-us-break-bad-habits</ref>
She is the author of the popular science book, ''Good Habits, Bad Habits,'' released in October 2019. This book was featured in the Next Big Idea Club and was reviewed in the New Yorker.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Groopman |first=Jerome |date=2019-10-21 |title=Can Brain Science Help Us Break Bad Habits? |language=en-US |work=The New Yorker |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/can-brain-science-help-us-break-bad-habits |access-date=2023-11-14 |issn=0028-792X}}</ref>


== Background ==
== Background ==
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Wood completed her bachelor's degree at [[University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign]] and her Ph.D. at the [[University of Massachusetts Amherst|University of Massachusetts, Amherst]].
Wood completed her bachelor's degree at [[University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign]] and her Ph.D. at the [[University of Massachusetts Amherst|University of Massachusetts, Amherst]].


Prior to her current position, Wood held faculty positions at [[University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee]], [[Texas A&M University]] as the Ella C. McFadden Professor of Liberal Arts, and [[Duke University]], where she was the [[James B. Duke]] Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience.
Prior to USC, Wood was on the faculty at [[University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee]], [[Texas A&M University]] as the Ella C. McFadden Professor of Liberal Arts, and [[Duke University]], where she was the [[James B. Duke]] Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience.


Wood is a fellow of the [[Society for Personality and Social Psychology]], [[American Psychological Society]], and [[Society for Experimental Social Psychology]], and a founding member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology. She has also served as associate editor of ''Psychological Review'', ''American Psychologist,'' ''Personality and Social Psychology Review'', ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', and ''Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.'' She served as President of the 7,000 member Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
Wood is a fellow of the [[Society for Personality and Social Psychology]], [[American Psychological Society]], and [[Society for Experimental Social Psychology]], and a founding member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology. She has also served as associate editor of ''Psychological Review,'' ''American Psychologist'', ''Personality and Social Psychology Review'', ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'', and ''Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin''. She served as President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Association for Psychological Science. Her research has been recognized with awards including a 2007 Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the 2021 Distinguished Contribution Award from Attitudes and Social influence, as well as the 2022 Career Contribution Award from SPSP. Her scientific research has been cited almost 60,000 times.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Wendy Wood |url=https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=xGaNvJ8AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220114202051/https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=xGaNvJ8AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate |archive-date=2024-12-28 |access-date=2024-12-28 |website=Google Scholar}}</ref>


== Habits ==
== Habits ==
Wood's primary research focuses on the effects of habits on behavior. Habits are response dispositions that are automatically activated by the context cues that accompanied the responses in the past.<ref>Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. ''Psychological Review, 114''(4), 843-863.</ref> Because habits are cued by the context in which they formed, they can be quite rigid. As Wood has shown, habits can be initiated independently of intentions and can occur with minimal conscious control.<ref name="Wood">Wood, W., Quinn, J. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Habits in everyday life: thought, emotion, and action. ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83''(6), 1281-1297.</ref> Wood’s body of work expands upon the central understanding that habits develop when people repeatedly give a response in the context of a behavior’s performance. Once habits form, perceiving that context automatically calls to mind the habitual response. Specific research topics in Woods’ lab include how and why people fall back into old habits, how good patterns help people meet goals, how to change unwanted habits, and how habits promote stereotypes in social groups.<ref name="Wood 121–146">{{Cite journal|last1=Wood|first1=Wendy M.|last2=Fowler|first2=Catherine H.|last3=Uphold|first3=Nicole|last4=Test|first4=David W.|date=2005-07-01|title=A Review of Self-Determination Interventions with Individuals with Severe Disabilities|journal=Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities|language=en|volume=30|issue=3|pages=121–146|doi=10.2511/rpsd.30.3.121|s2cid=145698523|issn=1540-7969}}</ref> Many of the actions of everyday life are habitual and thus can be difficult to change. Her foundational research using an ongoing assessment method revealed that 43% of everyday actions are habitual.
Wood's primary research focuses on the nature of habits and their influence on behavior. Habits are cognitive associations that people learn through repeated experience. Each time a behavior is repeated in the same context (location, time of day) for a reward (meeting a goal, feeling good), connections form in memory between the context and the rewarded response.<ref>Labrecque, J. S., Lee, K. M., & Wood, W. (2024). Measuring context-response associations that drive habits. ''Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 121'', 62-73. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jeab.893</ref> After enough repetition, the habitual response is automatically activated in mind when people are in that context.<ref>Wood, W., & Runger, D. T (2016). The psychology of habit. ''Annual Review, 67'', 289-314.https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417</ref> Habits are thus mental shortcuts that reduce decision making and make it easy to repeat what we have done in the past. As Wood has shown, and other research has replicated many times, habits can be initiated independently of intentions and can occur with minimal conscious control.<ref>Wood, W., Quinn, J. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Habits in everyday life: thought, emotion, and action. ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83''(6), 1281-1297. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1281</ref> Wood's research has focused on how and why people fall back into old habits, how good habits help people meet their goals, how to change unwanted habits, habits of social media use, and how interaction habits lead to discrimination in social groups. A signature finding is that ~40% of people's everyday actions are performed in a habitual way.


People are most likely to form habits when contexts promote easy repetition and when the behavior itself is rewarding.<ref>Wood, W., Mazar, A., & Neal, D. T. (2021). Habits and goals in human behavior. ''Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17''(2), 590-605. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691621994226</ref> Ease of repetition depends on friction, or existing barriers to performing a behavior (e.g., time, travel distance, effort). Illustrating how even subtle friction influences behavior, people were less likely to take an elevator and more likely to use the stairs in classic research that slowed the closing of an elevator door by 16 seconds.<ref>Wood, W. (2024). Habits, goals, and effective behavior change. ''Current Directions in Psychological Science, 33''(4), 226-232. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09637214241246480</ref> Rewards for a behavior can be intrinsic or extrinsic, but importantly should be experienced during performance. Thus, listening to podcasts while exercising is a reward that helps to build an exercise habit. Rewards activate the release of dopamine in the brain, which help to forge habit memory traces.
Changing habitual behavior often relies on introducing new contexts that do not cue the behavior. Intentions, instead of habits, are more likely to guide behavior when strong habits have not already been formed. Finally, Wood and her colleagues have shown that self-regulation of habitual behaviors is possible but requires considerable self-control resources.<ref name="Wood" /> This important work on habits has many practical applications, and its implications for addictions have been featured on NPR.<ref>Spiegel, A. (2012, January 2). What Vietnam taught us about breaking bad habits. https://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/02/144431794/what-vietnam-taught-us-about-breaking-bad-habits</ref><ref>Creatures Of Habit: How Habits Shape Who We Are — And Who We Become https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787160734/creatures-of-habit-how-habits-shape-who-we-are-and-who-we-become</ref>


Habit performance thus depends on context cues. When people experience changes in everyday contexts, such as when they move house or start a new job, then their old behaviors are no longer automatically cued.<ref>Wood, W. (2024). Habits, goals, and behavior change. ''Current Directions in Psychological Science, 33''(4), 226–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214241246480</ref> Context changes thus disrupt automatic repetition and encourage people to make decisions. Unless they have strong intentions to continue the behavior, they are unlikely to do so in the new context.<ref>Wood, W., Tam, L., & Witt, M. G. (2005). Changing circumstances, disrupting habits. ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88''(6), 918–933. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.918</ref>
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== Research ==
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Wood has made influential contributions in two additional research areas: the origins and maintenance of sex-related differences and similarities in social behavior and the dynamics of social influence and attitude change. Her contributions have received more than 32,000 citations.<ref>Wood's Google Scholar Page https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=xGaNvJ8AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate</ref>


People use social media repeatedly and receive rewards from others' likes, loves, shares, and follows. Thus, social media is a prime context of habit formation, with frequent users automatically opening apps, scrolling, posting, sharing, and reacting.<ref>Anderson, I. A., & Wood, W. (2021). Habits and the electronic heard: The psychology behind social media's successes and failures. ''Consumer Psychology Review, 4''(1), 83-99. https://doi.org/10.1002/arcp.1063</ref> Given that interesting information is rewarded on social media, users learn to automatically share all kinds of attention-getting information, even falsehoods. Ceylan et al. (2023) estimate that the 15% most habitual users share 35-40% of online misinformation.<ref>Ceylan, G., Anderson, I. A., & Wood, W. (2023). Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased. ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120''(4), 1–8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2216614120</ref> Misinformation is thus a consequence of the design and reward structure of social media sites. If other users also rewarded accurate information (e.g., a truth button as well as like/love buttons), then people would learn to share more truthful information.<ref>Ceylan, G., & Wood, W. (unpub). ''Altering instrumental learning on social media to make accuracy a social currency''.</ref> Thus, changing performance contexts and rewards are fundamental to changing habits.
⚫
In her second area of research, Wood has emphasized that the behavior of women and men can be different or similar, depending on individual dispositions, situations, cultures, and historical periods.<ref>Wood, W., & [[Alice Eagly|Eagly, A. H.]] (2012). Biosocial construction of sex differences and similarities in behavior. In J. M. Olson & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), ''Advances in experimental social psychology''(Vol. 46, pp. 55–123). London, England: Elsevier.</ref> In her biosocial theory, this flexibility reflects the central importance of a division of labor between women and men that is not static but is tailored to local ecological and socioeconomic conditions.<ref>Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. ''Psychological Bulletin, 128''(5), 699-727</ref> This division of tasks is facilitated by socialization practices directed toward children. These practices, combined with sex differences in child temperament, foster differing psychologies in boys and girls that are tailored to the tasks that they will likely carry out as adults who participate in their society's division of labor.
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== Other Research ==
⚫
Wood has made influential contributions in two additional research areas: the origins and maintenance of sex-related differences and similarities in social behavior and the dynamics of social influence and attitude change.


⚫
In the study of sex and gender, Wood has emphasized that the behavior of women and men can be different or similar, depending on individual dispositions, situations, cultures, and historical periods.<ref>Wood, W., & [[Alice Eagly|Eagly, A. H.]] (2012). Biosocial construction of sex differences and similarities in behavior. In J. M. Olson & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), ''Advances in experimental social psychology''(Vol. 46, pp. 55–123). London, England: Elsevier.</ref> This flexibility reflects the central importance of a division of labor between women and men that is not static but is tailored to local ecological and socioeconomic conditions.<ref>Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. ''Psychological Bulletin, 128''(5), 699-727</ref> Each society's division of labor is constrained by women's childbearing and nursing of infants and men's greater size and strength. Because these biological characteristics influence the how efficiently men or women can perform many activities, they create some uniformity across societies in the division of labor as well as variability across situations, cultures, and history.
Although each society's division of labor reflects its local conditions, Wood argues that it is also constrained by the biological endowment of the sexes in the form of women's childbearing and nursing of infants and men's greater size and strength. Because these biological characteristics influence the how efficiently men or women can perform many activities, they underlie central tendencies in the division of labor as well as its variability across situations, cultures, and history. The division of labor exists in a society at a particular point in time is fostered by gender roles, which are the shared beliefs that develop concerning the traits of women and men. These gender role beliefs track the division of labor because people infer these traits from observing the social behaviors of women and men. In other words, people think that women and men typically possess the traits that enable them to undertake their usual activities. Moreover, people essentialize these traits by regarding them as inherent in the biology or social experience of women and men. These gender role beliefs tend to be consensual—that is, stereotypical of each sex—within cultures and influence people's personal identities to the extent that they internalize these beliefs.


In the biosocial theory of sex differences and similarities, these gender roles affect behavior through proximal social psychological and biological processes. Specifically, other people encourage gender-typical behavior, and individuals regulate their own behavior according to their own gender identities. Wood's research has illuminated the self-regulatory processes by which gender identities affect the behaviors of women and men.<ref>Wood, W., Christensen, P. N., Hebl, M. R., & Rothgerber, H. (1997). Conformity to sex-typed norms, affect, and the self-concept. ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73''(3), 523-535.</ref> Also, Wood has argued that hormonal, reward, and cardiovascular mechanisms work in conjunction with these social psychological processes to facilitate masculine and feminine behaviors.<ref>Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2010). Gender. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), ''Handbook of social psychology''(5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 629-667). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.</ref> This theory, in its several iterations, is often featured both in textbooks<ref>Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2008). The social psychology of gender: How power and intimacy shape gender relations. New York, NY: Guilford Press.</ref> and in websites and blogs pertaining to gender and sexuality.<ref>Rhetoric of gender and sexuality. http://gendersex.net/blog/archives/eagly-wood-origins-sex-differences/</ref>
Within societies, people regulate their own behavior according to their desired gender identities. Wood's research has illuminated the self-regulatory processes by which gender identities affect the behaviors of women and men.<ref>Wood, W., Christensen, P. N., Hebl, M. R., & Rothgerber, H. (1997). Conformity to sex-typed norms, affect, and the self-concept. ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73''(3), 523-535.</ref> Also, Wood has argued that hormonal, reward, and cardiovascular mechanisms work in conjunction with these social psychological processes to facilitate masculine and feminine behaviors.<ref>Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2010). Gender. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), ''Handbook of social psychology''(5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 629-667). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.</ref>


Wood has also undertaken research on several aspects of attitudes and social influence. Her work on minority influence has clarified the conditions under which people are influenced by the opinions of those who are in the minority in groups, compared with those who are in the majority.<ref>Wood, W., Lundgren, S., Ouellette, J. A., Busceme, S., & Blackstone, T. (1994). Minority influence: A meta-analytic review of social influence processes. ''Psychological Bulletin, 115''(3), 323-345.</ref> She has also examined the influence processes that occur in close relationships.<ref>Oriña, M. M., Wood, W., & Simpson, J. A. (2002). Strategies of influence in close relationships. ''Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38''(5), 459-472.</ref> Her attention to attitude change processes includes the effects of forewarnings of impending influence on the extent to which persuasion is effective.<ref>Wood, W., & Quinn, J. M. (2003). Forewarned and forearmed? Two meta-analysis syntheses of forewarnings of influence appeals. ''Psychological Bulletin, 129''(1), 119-138.</ref>
Wood has also undertaken research on several aspects of attitudes and social influence. Her work on minority influence has clarified the conditions under which people are influenced by the opinions of those who are in the minority in groups, compared with those who are in the majority.<ref>Wood, W., Lundgren, S., Ouellette, J. A., Busceme, S., & Blackstone, T. (1994). Minority influence: A meta-analytic review of social influence processes. ''Psychological Bulletin, 115''(3), 323-345.</ref> She has also examined the influence processes that occur in close relationships.<ref>Oriña, M. M., Wood, W., & Simpson, J. A. (2002). Strategies of influence in close relationships. ''Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38''(5), 459-472.</ref> Her attention to attitude change processes includes the effects of forewarnings of impending influence on the extent to which persuasion is effective.<ref>Wood, W., & Quinn, J. M. (2003). Forewarned and forearmed? Two meta-analysis syntheses of forewarnings of influence appeals. ''Psychological Bulletin, 129''(1), 119-138.</ref>


Wood's work has typically combined primary research and meta-analytic integrations of all of the available evidence. She has thus produced numerous highly authoritative [[meta-analyses]] of social psychological phenomena.<ref>Ouellette, J. A., & Wood, W. (1998). Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior. ''Psychological Bulletin, 124''(1), 54-74.</ref><ref>Rhodes, N., & Wood, W. (1992). Self-esteem and intelligence affect influence ability: The mediating role of message reception. ''Psychological Bulletin, 111''(1), 156-171.</ref>
Wood's work has typically combined primary research and meta-analytic integrations of all of the available evidence. She has thus produced numerous highly authoritative [[meta-analyses]] of social psychological phenomena.<ref>Ouellette, J. A., & Wood, W. (1998). Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior. ''Psychological Bulletin, 124''(1), 54-74.</ref><ref>Rhodes, N., & Wood, W. (1992). Self-esteem and intelligence affect influence ability: The mediating role of message reception. ''Psychological Bulletin, 111''(1), 156-171.</ref> A 2014 meta-analysis testing the influence of menstrual cycles on women's mate preferences debunked the then-popular idea that women, when fertile, prefer more masculine, high testosterone men.<ref>Wood, W., Kressel, L., Joshi, P. D., & Louie, B. (2014). Meta-analysis of menstrual cycle effects on women’s mate preferences. Emotion Review, 6(3), 229-249.</ref> Considerable research has echoed this failure for menstrual phase to affect mate preferences.

In addition to her research on the previously listed topics, Wood also studies the effects of self-determination interventions on individuals with severe disabilities.<ref name="Wood 121–146"/> In 2005 Wood and colleagues conducted a comprehensive review of intervention studies that were designed to teach core skills of “self-determination” to individuals who have severe disabilities. In 2005, Wood and colleagues conducted a comprehensive review of intervention studies that were designed to teach “self-determination” <ref name="peerspectrum.com">{{Cite web|url=https://peerspectrum.com/2020/01/31/harnessing-the-habitual-mind-psychologist-behavioral-scientist-wendy-wood-phd/|title=Harnessing the habitual mind. Psychologist & behavioral scientist, Wendy Wood, PhD|date=2020-01-31|website=PeerSpectrum Podcast|language=en|access-date=2020-03-05}}</ref> to disabled individuals. This work advocated for teaching self-management, problem solving, goal setting, decision making, and self-advocacy skills to those individuals.  

In 2005, Wood published a study investigating how changing environmental circumstances can disrupt habits. The study identified stimulus cues that triggered habit performance, and investigated how these habits would change when the usual situational context that provided the stimuli changed.<ref name="peerspectrum.com"/> In this specific case, participants were students who had just transferred to a new university, and the habits only remained when the performance context did not change.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Kuntz|first1=Emily M.|last2=Carter|first2=Erik W.|date=2019-06-01|title=Review of Interventions Supporting Secondary Students with Intellectual Disability in General Education Classes|journal=Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities|language=en|volume=44|issue=2|pages=103–121|doi=10.1177/1540796919847483|s2cid=181418744|issn=1540-7969}}</ref>


== Works ==
== Works ==
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Revision as of 16:41, 28 December 2024

Wendy Wood is a UK-born psychologist who is the Provost Professor Emerita of Psychology and Business at University of Southern California, where she has been a faculty member since 2009. She previously served as vice dean of social sciences at the Dornsife College of the University of Southern California. Her primary research contributions are in habits and behavior change along with the psychology of gender.

She is the author of the popular science book, Good Habits, Bad Habits, released in October 2019. This book was featured in the Next Big Idea Club and was reviewed in the New Yorker.[1]

Background

Wood completed her bachelor's degree at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Prior to USC, Wood was on the faculty at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Texas A&M University as the Ella C. McFadden Professor of Liberal Arts, and Duke University, where she was the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience.

Wood is a fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, American Psychological Society, and Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and a founding member of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology. She has also served as associate editor of Psychological Review, American Psychologist, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. She served as President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Association for Psychological Science. Her research has been recognized with awards including a 2007 Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, the 2021 Distinguished Contribution Award from Attitudes and Social influence, as well as the 2022 Career Contribution Award from SPSP. Her scientific research has been cited almost 60,000 times.[2]

Habits

Wood's primary research focuses on the nature of habits and their influence on behavior. Habits are cognitive associations that people learn through repeated experience. Each time a behavior is repeated in the same context (location, time of day) for a reward (meeting a goal, feeling good), connections form in memory between the context and the rewarded response.[3] After enough repetition, the habitual response is automatically activated in mind when people are in that context.[4] Habits are thus mental shortcuts that reduce decision making and make it easy to repeat what we have done in the past. As Wood has shown, and other research has replicated many times, habits can be initiated independently of intentions and can occur with minimal conscious control.[5] Wood's research has focused on how and why people fall back into old habits, how good habits help people meet their goals, how to change unwanted habits, habits of social media use, and how interaction habits lead to discrimination in social groups. A signature finding is that ~40% of people's everyday actions are performed in a habitual way.

People are most likely to form habits when contexts promote easy repetition and when the behavior itself is rewarding.[6] Ease of repetition depends on friction, or existing barriers to performing a behavior (e.g., time, travel distance, effort). Illustrating how even subtle friction influences behavior, people were less likely to take an elevator and more likely to use the stairs in classic research that slowed the closing of an elevator door by 16 seconds.[7] Rewards for a behavior can be intrinsic or extrinsic, but importantly should be experienced during performance. Thus, listening to podcasts while exercising is a reward that helps to build an exercise habit. Rewards activate the release of dopamine in the brain, which help to forge habit memory traces.

Habit performance thus depends on context cues. When people experience changes in everyday contexts, such as when they move house or start a new job, then their old behaviors are no longer automatically cued.[8] Context changes thus disrupt automatic repetition and encourage people to make decisions. Unless they have strong intentions to continue the behavior, they are unlikely to do so in the new context.[9]

People use social media repeatedly and receive rewards from others' likes, loves, shares, and follows. Thus, social media is a prime context of habit formation, with frequent users automatically opening apps, scrolling, posting, sharing, and reacting.[10] Given that interesting information is rewarded on social media, users learn to automatically share all kinds of attention-getting information, even falsehoods. Ceylan et al. (2023) estimate that the 15% most habitual users share 35-40% of online misinformation.[11] Misinformation is thus a consequence of the design and reward structure of social media sites. If other users also rewarded accurate information (e.g., a truth button as well as like/love buttons), then people would learn to share more truthful information.[12] Thus, changing performance contexts and rewards are fundamental to changing habits.

Other Research

Wood has made influential contributions in two additional research areas: the origins and maintenance of sex-related differences and similarities in social behavior and the dynamics of social influence and attitude change.

In the study of sex and gender, Wood has emphasized that the behavior of women and men can be different or similar, depending on individual dispositions, situations, cultures, and historical periods.[13] This flexibility reflects the central importance of a division of labor between women and men that is not static but is tailored to local ecological and socioeconomic conditions.[14] Each society's division of labor is constrained by women's childbearing and nursing of infants and men's greater size and strength. Because these biological characteristics influence the how efficiently men or women can perform many activities, they create some uniformity across societies in the division of labor as well as variability across situations, cultures, and history.

Within societies, people regulate their own behavior according to their desired gender identities. Wood's research has illuminated the self-regulatory processes by which gender identities affect the behaviors of women and men.[15] Also, Wood has argued that hormonal, reward, and cardiovascular mechanisms work in conjunction with these social psychological processes to facilitate masculine and feminine behaviors.[16]

Wood has also undertaken research on several aspects of attitudes and social influence. Her work on minority influence has clarified the conditions under which people are influenced by the opinions of those who are in the minority in groups, compared with those who are in the majority.[17] She has also examined the influence processes that occur in close relationships.[18] Her attention to attitude change processes includes the effects of forewarnings of impending influence on the extent to which persuasion is effective.[19]

Wood's work has typically combined primary research and meta-analytic integrations of all of the available evidence. She has thus produced numerous highly authoritative meta-analyses of social psychological phenomena.[20][21] A 2014 meta-analysis testing the influence of menstrual cycles on women's mate preferences debunked the then-popular idea that women, when fertile, prefer more masculine, high testosterone men.[22] Considerable research has echoed this failure for menstrual phase to affect mate preferences.

Works

  • Good Habits, Bad Habits (2019). ISBN 978-1-250-15907-6

References

  1. ^ Groopman, Jerome (2019-10-21). "Can Brain Science Help Us Break Bad Habits?". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2023-11-14.
  2. ^ "Wendy Wood". Google Scholar. Archived from the original on 2024-12-28. Retrieved 2024-12-28. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 2022-01-14 suggested (help)
  3. ^ Labrecque, J. S., Lee, K. M., & Wood, W. (2024). Measuring context-response associations that drive habits. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 121, 62-73. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jeab.893
  4. ^ Wood, W., & Runger, D. T (2016). The psychology of habit. Annual Review, 67, 289-314.https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417
  5. ^ Wood, W., Quinn, J. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Habits in everyday life: thought, emotion, and action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(6), 1281-1297. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1281
  6. ^ Wood, W., Mazar, A., & Neal, D. T. (2021). Habits and goals in human behavior. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17(2), 590-605. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691621994226
  7. ^ Wood, W. (2024). Habits, goals, and effective behavior change. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 33(4), 226-232. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09637214241246480
  8. ^ Wood, W. (2024). Habits, goals, and behavior change. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 33(4), 226–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214241246480
  9. ^ Wood, W., Tam, L., & Witt, M. G. (2005). Changing circumstances, disrupting habits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(6), 918–933. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.918
  10. ^ Anderson, I. A., & Wood, W. (2021). Habits and the electronic heard: The psychology behind social media's successes and failures. Consumer Psychology Review, 4(1), 83-99. https://doi.org/10.1002/arcp.1063
  11. ^ Ceylan, G., Anderson, I. A., & Wood, W. (2023). Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(4), 1–8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2216614120
  12. ^ Ceylan, G., & Wood, W. (unpub). Altering instrumental learning on social media to make accuracy a social currency.
  13. ^ Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2012). Biosocial construction of sex differences and similarities in behavior. In J. M. Olson & M. P. Zanna (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology(Vol. 46, pp. 55–123). London, England: Elsevier.
  14. ^ Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128(5), 699-727
  15. ^ Wood, W., Christensen, P. N., Hebl, M. R., & Rothgerber, H. (1997). Conformity to sex-typed norms, affect, and the self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(3), 523-535.
  16. ^ Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2010). Gender. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology(5th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 629-667). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
  17. ^ Wood, W., Lundgren, S., Ouellette, J. A., Busceme, S., & Blackstone, T. (1994). Minority influence: A meta-analytic review of social influence processes. Psychological Bulletin, 115(3), 323-345.
  18. ^ Oriña, M. M., Wood, W., & Simpson, J. A. (2002). Strategies of influence in close relationships. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38(5), 459-472.
  19. ^ Wood, W., & Quinn, J. M. (2003). Forewarned and forearmed? Two meta-analysis syntheses of forewarnings of influence appeals. Psychological Bulletin, 129(1), 119-138.
  20. ^ Ouellette, J. A., & Wood, W. (1998). Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 124(1), 54-74.
  21. ^ Rhodes, N., & Wood, W. (1992). Self-esteem and intelligence affect influence ability: The mediating role of message reception. Psychological Bulletin, 111(1), 156-171.
  22. ^ Wood, W., Kressel, L., Joshi, P. D., & Louie, B. (2014). Meta-analysis of menstrual cycle effects on women’s mate preferences. Emotion Review, 6(3), 229-249.
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