REVIEW article
Front. Behav. Neurosci.
Sec. Motivation and Reward
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring the framing effect on maladaptive behaviors: Neural mechanisms and applicationsView all 3 articles
Framing as a mechanism to overcome the temptation of bad habits
Provisionally accepted
- Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States
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Behavioral neuroscience generally conceives of habits as under stimulus-response control, and distinguishes habits from goal-directed behavior based on their insensitivity to outcome value (features of automaticity). However, the everyday meaning of "bad habits" is applied primarily to behaviors that are compelling, in part, because of their value. In particular, commonly identified bad habits (e.g., overuse of social media, overeating, smoking) are repeated behaviors that yield appealing immediate outcomes, but at a greater longer term cost ("temptations"). We begin by evaluating the role of both automaticity and temptation in the maintenance of bad habits. Next we focus on how framing effects can be used to shift the balance of motivation away from immediate and/or towards delayed outcome value, including a partial summary of what is known about the neural substrates that mediate such shifts. We pay particular attention to the way frames can promote replacing bad habits with good habits through emphasizing the connection between specific choices and general policy preferences.
Keywords: habits, Framing effets, delay discounting, Self-Control, temptation
Received: 11 Aug 2025; Accepted: 03 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang and Monterosso. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: John R Monterosso, johnrmon@usc.edu
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