Replacement, not a ban

The if-then plan

Psychology uses the term implementation intention for a plan of the form “if situation X occurs, I will do Y”. Such a plan links an action to a specific cue. The question is what to put in place of Y when the goal is to drop an old action.

The problem with “don’t”

In the paper “Planning what not to eat” (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2011), Marieke Adriaanse and colleagues tested plans with a negation: “if X, then not Y”. In their experiments, such plans backfired. The habitual response came to mind more readily and showed up more often in behaviour, compared with people who only set a general goal and with people who made a replacement plan. The effect was strongest when the old habit was strong.

The authors’ explanation: a negation still links the situation to the old action, since “not Y” contains Y.

What a replacement does

In another paper by the same group (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2011, volume 37, issue 4), the plan was phrased as a replacement: “if X, then Z instead of Y”. Such a plan removed the advantage the habitual action usually has at the moment of the cue: the old action no longer came to mind first. The new one did not become automatic right away, though. Behaviour changed to the extent that the person intended to act differently.

Why the old habit can return

In a 2002 review (Biological Psychiatry), the psychologist Mark Bouton describes the extinction of a learned response not as erasure but as new learning. It sits alongside the old learning and depends more strongly on context. That is why the old response can return, in a different place or simply with time. According to Bouton, this is a property of the mechanism itself, not a sign that it was all in vain.

The role of surroundings

Wendy Wood and colleagues (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2005) followed students who transferred to another university. Habits such as exercise, reading the newspaper or watching TV persisted when the surroundings stayed similar. When they changed, behaviour depended more on the person’s own intentions. A change of surroundings, such as a move, a new job or a new daily routine, is therefore a moment when old automatic behaviour is weaker.

How this works in Metamorphosis

Replacement templates in the app are set up as a pair: after what, and what instead. For example: “After waking up: open the window and drink a glass of water, phone later.” Such a habit has no streak. Instead, “Swap worked” counts how many times in total it went the new way. The number only grows and is not reset after a gap. If the old habit returns, that is an expected part of the process, and the next time counts again.