2 94 Why Living 



these things and a hundred others that 

 you do daily are habits. 



These habits are very helpful to you. 

 The child who has completely learned to 

 tie his own shoelaces without fumbhng 

 can tie up his shoe in a very much shorter 

 time than when he first attempted it. 

 Speed is acquired. Furthermore, the 

 laces stay tied; accuracy or efficiency 

 is developed. After the shoelaces have 

 been tied a few hundred times, the nec- 

 essary nerve connections are made so 

 easily that the child need not even keep 

 his eyes on the job; he can tie the laces 

 while watching the kitten chase its tail. 

 When an act has become habitual you 

 can perform it and another act at the 

 same time. 



Necessary conditions for habit forma- 

 tion. There must be frequent repetition. 

 Obviously you must not let exceptions 

 occur, for that means making a new start 

 each time. Yet repetition at frequent 

 short intervals is not the only condition 

 necessary for complete learning or form- 

 ing habits. Surely you have discovered 

 that the more deliberately and the more 

 eagerly you go about learning anything 

 the more successful you will be. But 

 what makes you eager? It is the knowl- 

 edge that there will be a reward at the 

 end. In the learning of other animals the 

 reward is often food. For you the re- 

 \\'ard may be the feeling of success, the 

 surpassing of others, or the thrill of ac- 

 complishment. Also the reward for you 

 may be long delayed and yet serve as an 

 incentive. In other animals it must be 

 immediate. 



Anything unpleasant serves as the op- 

 posite of a reward. It teaches an animal 

 to avoid something. An earthworm, put 



Things Behave As They Do unit v 



into a maze where it has a choice of 

 paths, learns to avoid a certain path if it 

 always gets an electric shock along this 

 course. For the child it may be merely a 

 look of disapproval on the parent's face 

 which keeps the child from learning cer- 

 tain actions. To review the paragraphs 

 on habits do Exercise 5. 



Breaking habits. Probably you have 

 several habits that are of no use to you. 

 You learn responses so easily, that is, you 

 acquire habits so readily that sometimes 

 you become perfect in activities without 

 becoming aware of it. These activities 

 may be useless or even harmful. Have you 

 such habits? Breaking yourself of a habit 

 may prove to be very difficult. iMerely 

 determining to break yourself of a habit 

 may meet with little success. Many hab- 

 its are so completely automatic that 

 often you are no longer conscious of 

 practicing them. Or, you may be con- 

 scious of the habit and it may give vou 

 satisfaction; in that case vou are torn be- 

 tween the desire to break the habit and 

 to keep it. The best way to break a habit 

 seems to be to attempt to substitute an- 

 other less objectionable habit for the 

 original one. Exercise 6 will help you 

 become aware of some of your own 

 habits. 



Acts involving thought or reasoning. 

 The sum total of our learned behavior is 

 more than the many conditioned re- 

 sponses and innumerable habits and skills 

 which we have learned through trial and 

 error. Human beings especially have 

 many activities of a still different nature. 

 A cat in a puzzle box solves its problem 

 of escape by trial and error. A baby 

 would do the same. But vou under simi- 

 lar conditions would not resort to trial 



