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Benjamin Gardner, Charles Abraham, Phillippa Lally, Gert-Jan de Bruijn, ‘The Habitual Use of the Self-report Habit Index’: A Reply, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Volume 43, Issue 1, February 2012, Pages 141–142, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-011-9317-6
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‘Habit’ is an abstract psychological construct, and its conceptualisation and measurement are open to debate. Sniehotta and Presseau [1] posit that habit is in essence a form of automaticity. They argue that the Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI) [2] is problematic because it assesses the central characteristic of habit (i.e. automaticity) together with its antecedent (repetition) and a possible consequence of automatic action (assimilation of the action into the self-concept). We agree that self-identity is not a necessary component of habit. Acquisition through repetition, however, distinguishes habit from other forms of automaticity, such as behaviour prompted by implementation intentions and unconditioned ideomotor reflexes, neither of which require prior performance. Where such a distinction is of interest, performance frequency indicators within the SRHI may be needed to demarcate habit from other automaticity subtypes.
Automaticity may be considered the ‘active ingredient’ of habit; it is because they are automatically activated that habits are performed frequently and override motivational tendencies in associated contexts [3]. Habit formation studies have thus focused on automaticity development [4]. Repetition items within the SRHI may conflate true effects of habit-related automaticity on behaviour because repeated performance is not necessarily indicative of habit [5]. As Ajzen [5] concluded, ‘a more appropriate approach would rely on an operationalization of habit that is independent of the behavior it is supposed to explain and predict’ (p114). An automaticity-specific SRHI subscale may be more appropriate where estimating the impact of habit on behaviour or tracking habit formation, and several authors have attempted to exclude SRHI frequency items for these purposes. To our knowledge, the SRHI has not been subject to content validity assessment, and so it is difficult to reliably identify which items best capture automaticity.
