Most people associate bad habits with the kind of activities that wind up on a list of New Year’s resolutions—eating and drinking too much, spending too much time on the smartphone and avoiding the gym.
But bad habits are often behind more than just our personal peccadilloes. The neural machinery of habit formation is also the root cause of many of the worst collective behaviors: Texting while driving, gossiping about co-workers, littering, mansplaining, farting silently in public, making racist or unfair assumptions about strangers and even spreading the kind of misinformation online that some experts warn is threatening to undermine our democracy.
Many people who are aware of bad habits and recognize them to be potentially harmful blame themselves for being weak and lacking the willpower needed to resist them. But in recent years, scientists have used advanced imaging technologies to peer inside the brain as habits are being formed and they’ve mapped habit-formation to precise structures in the brain—structures formed so long ago in the smithy of evolution that humans share them with other mammals. Research suggests that habits, which operate below conscious awareness, usually cannot be tamed simply by resolving to resist them. By the time you realize you’re munching on that bag of potato chips, picking your nose, fighting with someone on Facebook or veering into oncoming traffic while texting, it’s too late.
Denne historien er fra February 17, 2023-utgaven av Newsweek US.
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Denne historien er fra February 17, 2023-utgaven av Newsweek US.
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Can Alternative Therapies Treat Cancer?
Doctor and breast cancer survivor Liz O'Riordan addresses misinformation around managing the disease
Falling for Romance
A new book, Nora Ephron at the Movies, celebrates the writer/director best known for her iconic rom-coms and strong female characters
Cracking the Norse Code
Walrus DNA has shown that Vikings were likely the first to have encountered Indigenous North Americans
Monumental Shift
The discovery of 165-million-year-old crystals Easter Island has upended the longheld notion of how the Earth's \"conveyor belt\" moves
'OUR FOREIGN POLICY AND DOMESTIC REFORMS ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN'
It is a well-known fact across the globe that the North Korean regime is irrational and unpredictable, but we have been consistent in strengthening our defense posture against the threat from North Korea since the Korean War, and I believe that their conventional capability is much inferior to that of the Korean military.
'They Read My Eulogy As I Lay in an Open Grave'
Like Paris Hilton, Natasia Pelowski claims she was subjected to abuse at a teenage therapy program
Russian Economy Faces 'Burnout
Vladimir Putin admits difficulties” as the country’s key interest rate reaches a historic high
China's 'Silent Chemical War'
The U.S. must investigate Beijing's role in the manufacturing of fentanyl that is killing Americans, says one mom whose daughter died after accidentally taking the illicit substance
HARSH HEADWINDS
President Yoon Suk Yeol's BATTLE to reform a South Korea beset with structural problems under the specter of an increasingly aggressive neighbor to THE NORTH
Bridget Everett
BRIDGET EVERETT NEVER THOUGHT SHE'D BE THE LEAD OF A TV SHOW. \"I come from the downtown world in New York, a cabaret singer, and these things just don't happen, you don't find yourself with three seasons of HBO.
