Staff Perspective: From Lab Rats to Life Hacks - What Mice, Pigeons, and Psych Nerds Taught Us About Habits
Before we dive into the world of trendy self-help books and motivational countdowns, let’s pay our respects to the ancestors of behavioral science. Thorndike (1911) showed us that actions followed by rewards get repeated, basically, the first “treat-for-trick” system. Hull (1943) tried to jazz things up with drive theory and equations, but it didn’t exactly go viral. Then B.F. Skinner (1953) stepped in and said, “Forget the feelings, just watch what happens after the behavior,” and psychology, education and advertising have never been the same.
Skinner’s big idea? Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. If something good happens after you do a thing, you’ll do that thing again. In the lab, this played out with pigeons and rats, but the principles translate to human behavior remarkably well: reward strengthens behavior; cues trigger responses; and small, consistent changes in environment can drive large behavioral shifts over time, e.g., habits. Pigeons pecking buttons? Us hitting “Next episode” on Netflix? Same principle. Fast forward more than a few decades, and we’ve got bestselling books turning lab science into daily hacks. Enter writers like Charles Duhigg, James Clear, and Mel Robbins, the heroes of habit change, or as I like to call them, behaviorists with better jargon.
In The Power of Habit (2012), Duhigg simplifies Skinner’s ideas into a catchy loop: cue → routine → reward. It is Skinner’s operant conditioning with a marketing glow up. Feeling stressed (cue)? Light a cigarette (routine)? Feel relief (reward)? That is a nasty habit loop. Want to change it? Keep the cue and reward, but swap the routine. Try breathing or walking instead of puffing. Eventually the substitute behavior is associated with the cue/reward and a new, more adaptive habit loop is formed. That’s what behaviorists call differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA), a not so catchy label.
Likewise, James Clear (2018), reintroduces successive approximations toward a desired behavior by encouraging readers to “make the habit so small it can’t fail”. His Two-Minute Rule suggests that instead of “Run 5 miles,” just “Put on running shoes.” That’s it. Just lace up and you win. Once that two-minute behavior becomes routine, add on another two-minute chunk, maybe a two-minute walk, and so on. This idea is rooted in “shaping,” or reinforcing small steps toward a goal, which behaviorists have been preaching since rats ran mazes.
Clear also describes my personal favorite, the Goldilocks Principle. If a task is too easy, it’s boring. If it’s too hard, it’s discouraging. To stay motivated, a task needs to be “just right”. It’s essentially the Yerkes-Dodson (1908) law in a bedtime story, or in nerdier parlance, optimal performance occurs at moderate levels of arousal. I had to look up Yerkes-Dodson again because that class was a loooong time ago for me, but the Goldilocks principle is right there in my brain, along with the three bears and the “just right” porridge. Clear just associated my motivation with the overlearned nursery tale and it will now be harder to forget. To stay motivated the task needs to be “just right.”
Mel Robbins’ 5 Second Rule (2017) is absurdly simple: if you feel the urge to do something important, count down from five and just move. Why? Because your brain is a pro at talking you out of doing hard things. It’s called avoidance! Her method interrupts that hesitation spiral and nudges you into action. Sound magical? It’s not. It’s just a snappy way to break a habit loop and very similar to techniques used in exposure therapy and behavioral activation (Martell, Dimidjian, & Herman-Dunn, 2010). Bonus: you don’t even have to want to do the thing. You just do it. ACT therapists everywhere nod in approval.
These authors don’t throw around the jargon of yore, but they’re working from the same playbook as Skinner and friends. Even their simple, sticky phrases like “the Goldilocks Principle,” “Make it obvious,” “Two-minute rule,” and “5-4-3-2-1 Go!” work as rule-governed behavior: internally generated instructions or verbal cues that guide action when external reinforcement isn’t right there.
Habit change has become less “reinforcement schedule,” more “hack your life.” But the basics remain: change your environment, create simple cues, and reward the heck out of small wins. Whether it’s changing your morning routine or quitting doomscrolling, they’re using principles forged in psychology labs many decades ago. They just package them with better cover art, quippy taglines, and fewer rats.
Skinner gave us the science. The heroes of habit change gave us the user manual. Whether you’re building a new habit, breaking a bad one, or just trying to floss more regularly, the takeaway is the same: behavior follows reinforcement, and small changes to your environment can lead to big shifts in your life.
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Kelly Chrestman, Ph.D., is a Senior Military Behavioral Health Psychologist at the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP). She provides training, support and consultation in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and in the Assessment and Treatment of PTSD.
References
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones.
Avery.
Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Random
House.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The
process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Hull, C. L. (1943). Principles of behavior: An introduction to behavior theory.
Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Martell, C. R., Dimidjian, S., & Herman-Dunn, R. (2010). Behavioral activation for depression: A
clinician’s guide. Guilford Press.
Robbins, M. (2017). The 5 second rule: Transform your life, work, and confidence with everyday
courage. Confidence Project Press.
Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. Macmillan.
Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. Alfred A. Knopf.
Thorndike, E. L. (1911). Animal intelligence: Experimental studies. Macmillan.
Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit
formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482.
https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.920180503
Before we dive into the world of trendy self-help books and motivational countdowns, let’s pay our respects to the ancestors of behavioral science. Thorndike (1911) showed us that actions followed by rewards get repeated, basically, the first “treat-for-trick” system. Hull (1943) tried to jazz things up with drive theory and equations, but it didn’t exactly go viral. Then B.F. Skinner (1953) stepped in and said, “Forget the feelings, just watch what happens after the behavior,” and psychology, education and advertising have never been the same.
Skinner’s big idea? Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences. If something good happens after you do a thing, you’ll do that thing again. In the lab, this played out with pigeons and rats, but the principles translate to human behavior remarkably well: reward strengthens behavior; cues trigger responses; and small, consistent changes in environment can drive large behavioral shifts over time, e.g., habits. Pigeons pecking buttons? Us hitting “Next episode” on Netflix? Same principle. Fast forward more than a few decades, and we’ve got bestselling books turning lab science into daily hacks. Enter writers like Charles Duhigg, James Clear, and Mel Robbins, the heroes of habit change, or as I like to call them, behaviorists with better jargon.
In The Power of Habit (2012), Duhigg simplifies Skinner’s ideas into a catchy loop: cue → routine → reward. It is Skinner’s operant conditioning with a marketing glow up. Feeling stressed (cue)? Light a cigarette (routine)? Feel relief (reward)? That is a nasty habit loop. Want to change it? Keep the cue and reward, but swap the routine. Try breathing or walking instead of puffing. Eventually the substitute behavior is associated with the cue/reward and a new, more adaptive habit loop is formed. That’s what behaviorists call differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA), a not so catchy label.
Likewise, James Clear (2018), reintroduces successive approximations toward a desired behavior by encouraging readers to “make the habit so small it can’t fail”. His Two-Minute Rule suggests that instead of “Run 5 miles,” just “Put on running shoes.” That’s it. Just lace up and you win. Once that two-minute behavior becomes routine, add on another two-minute chunk, maybe a two-minute walk, and so on. This idea is rooted in “shaping,” or reinforcing small steps toward a goal, which behaviorists have been preaching since rats ran mazes.
Clear also describes my personal favorite, the Goldilocks Principle. If a task is too easy, it’s boring. If it’s too hard, it’s discouraging. To stay motivated, a task needs to be “just right”. It’s essentially the Yerkes-Dodson (1908) law in a bedtime story, or in nerdier parlance, optimal performance occurs at moderate levels of arousal. I had to look up Yerkes-Dodson again because that class was a loooong time ago for me, but the Goldilocks principle is right there in my brain, along with the three bears and the “just right” porridge. Clear just associated my motivation with the overlearned nursery tale and it will now be harder to forget. To stay motivated the task needs to be “just right.”
Mel Robbins’ 5 Second Rule (2017) is absurdly simple: if you feel the urge to do something important, count down from five and just move. Why? Because your brain is a pro at talking you out of doing hard things. It’s called avoidance! Her method interrupts that hesitation spiral and nudges you into action. Sound magical? It’s not. It’s just a snappy way to break a habit loop and very similar to techniques used in exposure therapy and behavioral activation (Martell, Dimidjian, & Herman-Dunn, 2010). Bonus: you don’t even have to want to do the thing. You just do it. ACT therapists everywhere nod in approval.
These authors don’t throw around the jargon of yore, but they’re working from the same playbook as Skinner and friends. Even their simple, sticky phrases like “the Goldilocks Principle,” “Make it obvious,” “Two-minute rule,” and “5-4-3-2-1 Go!” work as rule-governed behavior: internally generated instructions or verbal cues that guide action when external reinforcement isn’t right there.
Habit change has become less “reinforcement schedule,” more “hack your life.” But the basics remain: change your environment, create simple cues, and reward the heck out of small wins. Whether it’s changing your morning routine or quitting doomscrolling, they’re using principles forged in psychology labs many decades ago. They just package them with better cover art, quippy taglines, and fewer rats.
Skinner gave us the science. The heroes of habit change gave us the user manual. Whether you’re building a new habit, breaking a bad one, or just trying to floss more regularly, the takeaway is the same: behavior follows reinforcement, and small changes to your environment can lead to big shifts in your life.
The opinions in CDP Staff Perspective blogs are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science or the Department of Defense.
Kelly Chrestman, Ph.D., is a Senior Military Behavioral Health Psychologist at the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP). She provides training, support and consultation in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and in the Assessment and Treatment of PTSD.
References
Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones.
Avery.
Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Random
House.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The
process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Hull, C. L. (1943). Principles of behavior: An introduction to behavior theory.
Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Martell, C. R., Dimidjian, S., & Herman-Dunn, R. (2010). Behavioral activation for depression: A
clinician’s guide. Guilford Press.
Robbins, M. (2017). The 5 second rule: Transform your life, work, and confidence with everyday
courage. Confidence Project Press.
Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. Macmillan.
Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. Alfred A. Knopf.
Thorndike, E. L. (1911). Animal intelligence: Experimental studies. Macmillan.
Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit
formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482.
https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.920180503