LILA ~ Learning Innovations Laboratory at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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  1. Katie Heikkinen

    Wendy Wood Provocation: Habits in Everyday Life and in the Workplace

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    Day 1: Habits in Everyday Life Dr. Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California, presented the event’s first provocation by sharing her research on habits.  In the talk, she explained what habits are, how they can become misaligned with our intentions, how they are often the default response (winning out over other behaviors), and how they often are useful. She opened by sharing her research on the habit of eating popcorn at the movies. We usually think we’re eating because we want to, like to, or somehow it meets our needs. But this...
  2. Gene Heyman Provocation: Do people choose locally or globally?

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    Gene relaunched the discussion about the dilemma of the local/global choices.   Where does this dilemma occur?  In situations in which the outcome depends on a series or pattern of behaviors.  Such as being healthy, temperate drinking, establishing a workplace of cooperation.  Gene suggests that these aren’t one-offs, but instead are accomplished via a series of events.  These he calls “dispositions”, “practices”, or “cultures” — these are habitual ways of behaving. And these patterns of behaviors interact not only with the immediate rewards but importantly affect other rewards and outcomes that are not in the moment. The dilemma between local-global...
  3. Habits in Everyday Life

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    Wendy Wood from USC joined LILA to share the research she does on habits -- what they are, how they can be aligned/misaligned with intentions, and how habits often override intentions (for better of worse). She set the table by suggested that habits are part our multiple selves, specifically part of our automatic self.That is the self that is guided by cation cues (like seeing a pot of coffee). This self is less conscious, not easily verbalize what we are doing, and changes slowly with experience. The automatic or "habitual self" is different from the "intentional self", which is guided by attitudes, goals, values. This self is more conscious, can verbalize, and can change quickly with decisions.

Harvard Graduate School of Education