This project is a transnational case study on the binge-watching and media habits of sixty interviewees from Brazil, China, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. First, it zooms in and asks what habits interviewees had at the time of the interview. How did interviewees habitually stop watching for the day? What cues in their environment were most likely to successfully trigger the end of a watch session, and which were most likely to fail? Second, it zooms out, and investigates how robust interviewees’ media habits were when faced with major habit discontinuities. When interviewees moved across borders, found partners or lost them, found employment or left it, had children or had children move out, did it affect their video watching habits? Which life events were most strongly associated with habit changes? It uses interviews grounded in trace data (platform logs of user behavior) from several major video platforms in order to study what habits people have around watching video, and if those habits are rigid or elastic when confronted with major life events. Using trace data as a prompt during interviews made it possible to elicit details of repetitive behavior, and also to observe how that behavior changed over time. This research finds that binge-watching, and video habits more generally, are a state, not a trait. They can be altered by changing cues in viewers’ environments. Some cues are more successful than others at ending individual viewing sessions. The end of an episode or the sense of time having passed are the least successful, and the loss of a given kind of content or being interrupted by a concrete, immediate obligation to pay attention elsewhere are the most successful. For major life events, different life events have different effects. A high degree of cognitive migration is associated with changes in what people watch after a move. Sharing a household with other people is associated with alternating between episodes of different shows, as well as with exposure to different watching practices and content which are adapted as people move through time and across borders.

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The paper examines a continuous-time principal-agent model in which agent’s preference exhibits habit formation over consumption. As agent’s concern over the standard of living strengthens, his continuation utility is less sensitive to current wealth but more sensitive to the standard of living, leading to lower demand for risk-sharing compensation. The optimal contract has lower pay-for-performance but incentivizes agent’s higher effort. In the Leland (1994) capital structure model, agent’s habit formation preference combined with the optimal contract lowers firm’s leverage and mitigates the debt-overhang problem. / 2025-05-28T00:00:00Z

No / OBJECTIVES: Cocrystallization of sulfadimidine (SDM) with suitable coformers, such as 4-aminosalicylic acid (4-ASA), combined with changes in the crystal habit can favourably alter its physicochemical properties. The aim of this work was to engineer SDM : 4-ASA cocrystals with different habits to investigate the effect on dissolution, and the derived powder properties of flow and compaction. METHODS: Cocrystals were prepared in a 1 : 1 molar ratio by solvent evaporation using ethanol (habit I) or acetone (habit II), solvent evaporation followed by grinding (habit III) and spray drying (habit IV). KEY FINDINGS: Powder X-ray diffraction showed Bragg peak position was the same in all the solid products. The peak intensity varied, indicating different preferred crystal orientation confirmed by SEM micrographs: large prismatic crystals (habit I), large plate-like crystals (habit II), small cube-like crystals (habit III) and microspheres (habit IV). The habit III exhibited the fasted dissolution rate; however, it underwent a polymorphic transition during dissolution. Habits I and IV exhibited the highest Carr's compressibility index, indicating poor flowability. However, habits II and III demonstrated improved flow. Spray drying resulted in cocrystals with improved compaction properties. CONCLUSIONS: Even for cocrystals with poor pharmaceutical characteristics, a habit can be engineered to alter the dissolution, flowability and compaction behaviour.

Yes / Objectives: Cocrystallization of sulfadimidine (SDM) with suitable coformers, such as 4-aminosalicylic acid (4-ASA), combined with changes in the crystal habit can favourably alter its physicochemical properties. The aim of this work was to engineer SDM:4-ASA cocrystals with different habits in order to investigate the effect on dissolution, and the derived powder properties of flow and compaction. Methods: Cocrystals were prepared in a 1:1 molar ratio by solvent evaporation using ethanol (habit I) or acetone (habit II), solvent evaporation followed by grinding (habit III) and spray-drying (habit IV). Key findings: Powder X-ray diffraction showed Bragg peak position was the same in all the solid products. The peak intensity varied, indicating different preferred crystal orientation confirmed by SEM micrographs: large prismatic crystals (habit I), large plate-like crystals (habit II), small cube-like crystals (habit III) and microspheres (habit IV). The habit III exhibited the fasted dissolution rate; however, it underwent a polymorphic transition during dissolution. Habits I and IV exhibited the highest Carr’s compressibility index, indicating poor flowability. However, habits II and III demonstrated improved flow. Spray drying resulted in cocrystals with improved compaction properties. Conclusions: Even for cocrystals with poor pharmaceutical characteristics, a habit can be engineered to alter the dissolution, flowability and compaction behavior. / Science Foundation Ireland. Grant Number: SFI/12/RC/2275

Objective: Anxiety and depression have been conceptualised as being associated with “an abundance of habit and a dearth of control” (Hertel, 2015, p. 1). There has been a recent and burgeoning interest toward understanding the role of habits in health psychology and in the psychological disorders of obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction in particular. To the author’s knowledge, there has been no previous systematic review that aimed to summarise the research investigating the involvement of mental habits in anxiety and depression in clinical and non-clinical populations. Method: The term habit was operationalized and inclusion criteria were specified in the domains of habit measurement, research paradigms, and manipulation tasks. A search across four databases was conducted: Web of Science, EBSCOhost, PubMed and OVID (PsycARTICLES and Journals@OVID). A progressive screening procedure yielded 8 relevant studies related to mental habits in anxiety (n = 1), depression (n = 4) and both anxiety and depression (n = 3). Results: Self-report habit measures correlate with the presence of symptoms. Computational modelling reinforcement learning and goal-devaluation paradigms demonstrate that anxiety and depression are associated with deficits in goal-directed learning and decision-making in favour of habitual learning strategies. Cognitive bias modification meets the criteria for enabling habit change and can strengthen or weaken interpretative habits in response to training. Conclusions: Despite considerable variability and limitations in the design of the studies appraised in this review, overall findings indicate support for habitual thought processes being implicated in anxiety and depression. Treating problematic thought processes in anxiety and depression as habitual – cued automatically by contextual cues, not goal-dependent and resistant to change – may be beneficial for future research and clinical applications. Abstract (Experimental Study) This study investigated predictions from the habit-goal framework for depressive rumination (Watkins & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2014) using a simultaneous replication single case experimental design in a multiple baseline case series. Seven high ruminators were recruited from community and university settings (with one participant’s data later excluded due to insufficient baseline rumination). Following a baseline monitoring period, participants received an intervention that included (i) spotting personal triggers for rumination and (ii) the practice of a scripted concrete thinking exercise (CTE) in response to these triggers, utilising an implementation intention (If-Then plan). It was predicted that practice of the IF-THEN CTE, linked to warning signs, would result in a significant reduction in both frequency and automaticity of rumination in the intervention phase compared to baseline. At the group level, using randomization tests (Onghena & Edgington, 2005), reductions in automaticity of rumination were trending toward statistical significance whilst the impact of the intervention on rumination frequency was not statistically significant. Effect size calculations, using nonoverlap of all pairs, demonstrated a medium effect of the intervention on automaticity (NAP = .76) and weak to medium effect on frequency of rumination (NAP = .66). Visual and statistical analysis of individual data demonstrated that two participants experienced statistically significant benefits (p < .05) for a reduction in automaticity of rumination and one participant’s frequency of rumination was significantly reduced. These two participants also showed the greatest levels of automaticity for the IF-THEN-CTE intervention during the intervention phase. Five participants demonstrated a strong or medium effect of the intervention on automaticity and two participants demonstrated a medium effect on frequency. Taken together, the data is broadly consistent with the predictions made by the habit-goal framework. Pre and post measures indicate reductions for all participants in rumination as habit using the self-report habit index (SRHI) and overall rumination levels rated on the ruminative responses scale (RRS). At post intervention three participants no longer met criteria for inclusion to the study on the RRS. Despite mixed results, feedback at debrief indicated that the intervention was acceptable to participants who reported that they would carry on using it after the study ended.

In this project, I argue that David Foster Wallace's 1996 novel Infinite jest (or IJ) is both about recovering from addiction through humility, and also it produces that humility in some of its readers by making us feel ourselves to be addicts to a certain kind of reading: a reading to find closure, certainty, and resolution. But, in frustrating the desires for closure, certainty, resolution, etc., IJ denies readers the satisfaction of completing the fix. It is precisely this denial that prompts readers to re-read, repeating the structure of addiction--but also destructuring it, by installing habits of reading that pleasure in the failure to close, the uncertainty, the impossibility of resolution--habits which I treat as humility. Following a thread in the performative theory of J.L. Austin, Jacques Derrida, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, I clear space for reconceptualizing the performative utterance through an unusual example of a performative utterance: I take IJ to be the utterance of humility. Drawing on Avital Ronell's "narcoanalysis" in Crack wars, I argue that IJ's performative or substantializing work is in exploiting one kind of habit (addiction) in order to replace it with another (humility). The rhetorical transformation (to humility) effects itself through IJ's performative formation (in the reader) of the humbled habit. This project is a reading of a performative utterance (IJ) that produces a rhetorical effect, which effect is the formation of the habit of humility. / text

Thirty-two cigarette smokers received six sessions of rapid smoking after which they were randomly assigned to one of four maintenance conditions, The conditions were (a) contingency contracting, (b) social support, (c) a continuation of rapid smoking and (d) a minimal contact control group, A total of seven maintenance sessions were scheduled for each maintenance group, and they were spread over a three month period. At the end of the maintenance period the control group was smoking at baseline level again. No differences between the maintenance groups were detected, However, the contracting group and the social support group were smoking significantly less than the control group.

This study examined the effects of a smoking prevention program on the acquisition of refusal skills in junior high school students. Sixty-three seventh graders were randomly assigned to a refusal skill training group (N=29) or a no treatment control group (N=34). Students' refusal skill performance was assessed pre and post training. Assessment consisted of a peer trainer offering the student a cigarette while being videotaped. The smoking refusal skill was broken down into 5 component parts: (1) eye contact; (2) upright posture; (3) voice intonation; (4) response to approach; (5) reason for refusal. Results showed significant improvement for both the training and control groups. However, a significant training by pre-post assessment interaction was also found, F (1,61) = 10.37, p < .01, which indicates that students who received training demonstrated more proficiency in refusal performance after training than those who did not. A generalization probe in the natural environment conducted seven weeks after training showed no differences between the two groups.

A question that has plagued New Zealand botanists for many years is the occurrence of the divaricate growth form in several different plant families, and what selection pressure could have led to such parallel evolution. One prominent theory is that the divaricate habit is an adaptation to climatic extremes. This study aims to test if the 'self-shading' growth form of divaricates protects their internal leaves from photoinhibition under physiological drought and high irradiance. By being able to forego the costs of maintaining photoprotective mechanisms, they should have greater carbon gain than their non-divaricate congeners under these conditions. To test if divaricates are protected from the detrimental effects of photoinhibition, the water potentials, pigment and vitamin E concentrations, and photosynthetic rates of two divaricates species in their natural habitat were measured. Additionally, these parameters were recorded for the same divaricate species and their non-divaricate congeners under glasshouse conditions. In the field there were clear differences in several key parameters between divaricates under different levels of irradiance and water availability, and in most cases there was clear evidence of photoinbition. In the glasshouse, the maximum photosynthetic rates were significantly higher in divaricate leaves than in non-divaricate leaves, but there were no clear differences in the avoidance of photoinhibition between divaricates and non-divaricates. Interestingly, more pronounced responses to the different treatments were observed between genera than between the growth forms in the field and glasshouse experiments. The presence of photoinhibition and photoprotective mechanisms in divaricate leaves does not support the theory that the divaricate habit evolved as a physiological response to extreme climate conditions. The absence of a strong difference in the amount of photoinhibition between divariacte and non-divaricate congeners mean that high irradiance and drought stress are unlikely to have been a key factor in the evolution of the divaricate habit. That the within genus physiologies are more similar than within the growth forms would indicate that the divaricate habit possibly evolved after the evolution of the physiological responses of the genera.