Habits

DeBrandon Matthews

PSY/250

January 27, 2013
Elaine Parks

Habits

Habits, a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance you take responsibility for your own behavior. You don't blame circumstances, conditions, or your conditioning for your behavior. You choose your response to any situation and any person. In this paper I have been asked to analyze one of my habits. I have many habits, some of the habits I have are somewhat unhelpful and some are not so. Some habits would shock people nothing illegal of course and some would make people laugh. The one habit that I have and that I’ve decided to formally discuss and what caused me to initiate this habit, and that is my habit of smoking cigars (Black and mild).
It all started when I was 14 years old. I was with one of my cousins who did smoke, and being the aroused by the smell I asked if I can have one. At first he kind of hesitated to give me one, but I keep pushing him to let me try and he gave in and from that moment I’ve been hooked. Over the years it’s become a habit that I’ve tried to overcome and let go but it has not been an easy road to accomplish. Regarding me having any role models that would influence me, I’ve seen numerous family members smoke around me but they have never tried to ever offer me any and at that time never really considered trying cigars.
The excuse I’ve used to continue smoking is that I have too much stress when dealing with my personal issues in life and that smoking is the only thing that can calm me down when needed. The only time I’ve actually stopped smoking was when I found out I was losing stamina and still I smoked for the first 6 years after my fourteenth birthday until I told myself that I cannot continue to harm my lungs anymore, plus that taste was becoming unbearable. A little after I stopped, I’d say about maybe 2 months after my twenty first birthdays I began the habit once again. Now I’ve tried many attempts to quit smoking but all had failed. I even tried when I decided to move to Texas a year and a half later. I thought since I was changing my environment I might as well go ahead and change my whole lifestyle with it too. But that didn’t last long, just 2 weeks into it; I was right back at it. The behavioral personality theory will explain why i had this habit. Behavioral personality theory looks at the surroundings as well as the general public impact on how an individual acts which might be the reason for smoking behavior. This theory faults the environment as well as the individual by saying it is a learned behavior and that it also was a choice they made. A basic assumption is that behavior is learned and modeled by individuals, groups, the media, and society as a whole. The concept explains why people smoke for a number of reasons. People smoke because of the benefits and the rewards they may receive for it. For an example, most people sell drugs because they see the materialistic and money gained from selling drugs. People also smoke because of their attachments to their peers, and by wanting to be accepted. This theory also explains that you are making a choice to participate and that you are learning the behavior. Habit hierarchy, In essence the individual’s experiences results in learning the likelihood that a specific response in a particular situation results in reward. Using this information, the individual ranks the probability of responses in the habit hierarchy. Through this implicit process, the responses most likely to result in reward become the responses most likely to occur. Social learning theories see this personal ranking as responsible for individual differences that we often term personal style or personality. Also, many of the importance reinforces that determine a person’s habit hierarchy are social in nature, coming from people in the social environment. I really do not have a plan but I do have an experience that helped me overcome my smoking of cigars. One day I was hanging out with some family (that did not smoke), and I felt I needed a cigar break and I had a random thought about wanting to quit smoking. My uncle stepped outside with me and I shared with him the random thought and he said let me enlighten you on how I stopped smoking. The way he stop smoking was, first he asked himself why every time I say I want to stop smoking I cannot kick the habit, why is this controlling my train of thought, how bad is this for my health and do I have the will power to just stop. So he then asked himself to stop and he put down the smokes and has not touched them since. I then take this conversation into heed and thought well if my uncle can just stop smoking just like that based on his thought process then what is wrong with my thought process. So I put down the cigars and I have loved the way I felt ever since I had that conversation with my uncle it has now been eight years since I have stopped smoking cigars and now I have developed the sour face when I smell smoke and no one is allowed to smoke in my home. Between the behavioral and social/cognitive theories the one that explains my personality is social-cognitive, because Social-cognitive theories of personality are very interested in describing and explaining how change processes work. As noted social-cognitive theorist Bandura (2001) observes, “The capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one’s life is the essence of humanness” (p. 1). For this reason, social-cognitive theorists have devoted extensive effort to identifying the mechanisms of personality that either foster or inhibit change. According to Schwarz (2001), the social cognitive theory of personality considers change to be comprised of two distinct processes that must be deployed in stages. The first process is developing the awareness of a problem and developing the motivation to change that problem and experience relief. Many people can reach this stage and resolve it successfully.

References
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