Clinical Trial Details
— Status: Completed
Administrative data
NCT number |
NCT05070143 |
Other study ID # |
MTurk Study Habit Formation |
Secondary ID |
|
Status |
Completed |
Phase |
N/A
|
First received |
|
Last updated |
|
Start date |
October 7, 2021 |
Est. completion date |
May 1, 2023 |
Study information
Verified date |
May 2023 |
Source |
University of California, Berkeley |
Contact |
n/a |
Is FDA regulated |
No |
Health authority |
|
Study type |
Interventional
|
Clinical Trial Summary
Habits impact nearly every domain of one's physical and mental health. Evidence-based
psychological treatments (EBPTs) are interventions targeting psychological processes that
cause and/or maintain mental illness and that have been developed and evaluated
scientifically. An implicit goal of EBPTs is to disrupt unwanted habits and develop desired
habits. Yet, there has been insufficient attention given to habit formation principles,
theory and measures in the development and delivery of EBTPs.
In preparing to conduct a 5-year R01 on this topic, the investigators are conducting this
experiment to better understand habit formation. The purpose is to distill, study and clarify
key concepts in habit formation before embarking on the 5-year R01. This is necessary as
there is surprisingly little research to guide key decisions, particularly for the process of
dismantling unwanted habits. Hence, the aim of this experiment is to compare strategies
discussed in the scientific literature, which have been minimally studied, to dismantle
unwanted habits. The hypothesis tested is that each of the active strategies will be superior
to the no intervention group. The study is exploratory as to which of the active strategies
will be most effective.
Description:
The investigators motivation for considering a deeper application of the science of habit
formation within clinical psychological science is that many researchers and clinicians
consider the process of habit formation to be a "passive phenomenon," or "a 'natural' outcome
of the behavior change process" rather than a process that can be specifically planned for
and guided. In contrast, there are clear principles and strategies that the investigators can
draw from, adapt and infuse into existing EBPTs to more intentionally incorporate the science
of habit formation. Therefore, the investigators propose the study of habits is an important,
fertile, creative and fascinating domain for future research.
To date, no prior research has been conducted on the disruption of habits. Hence, there is a
great need for more naturalistic studies to delineate the contributors to knowledge about the
multiple complex "real-life" habits that are tackled in EBPTs.
The theoretical grounding is drawn from health psychology, due to its conceptual proximity to
clinical psychological science. In the health psychology literature, habit formation is
understood to be a learned process whereby a behavior (the desired habit) becomes paired with
a stable context cue and, via repetition, come to trigger an automatic impulse to engage in
the habit. Repetition reinforces the behavior-context association. Reinforcement motivates
and strengthens repetition. With ongoing repetition, the stable context cue becomes
sufficient to activate the association. In other words, the context triggers the impulse to
perform the behavior, with minimal cognitive effort or intention and the habit has become
more automated and less reliant on one's goals.
Participants will be workers recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online labor
marketplace that is also used as a recruitment platform for web-based studies, and which has
a demonstrated reliability for producing high-quality research. The investigators aim to
recruit 462 eligible participants.
A listing describing the proposed research will be posted to MTurk, where participants will
be able to review the tasks involved in the study and compare the study to other
opportunities on MTurk. Participants will complete the pre-screening assessment.
Eligible participants will be invited to complete the baseline session, which includes the
pre-assessment, online learning module, and immediate post-assessment. Participants will be
randomly allocated to one of the following experimental conditions immediately upon
completing the online learning module. For each condition, participants will be instructed to
identify a cue and reward/reinforcement for engaging in the new strategy.
One week after each condition is presented, the participant will be reminded of the
instructions and will complete an assessment. Thereafter, at weekly intervals, participants
will re-complete the assessments for another 4 weeks (i.e., each condition runs for 6 weeks).
At 6-weeks and 3-months after the last assessment, the participants will re-complete the
assessments.