In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that. OVER 60 WEEKS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST With a new Afterword by the author. In The Power of Habit, Pulitzer Prize–winning business. The 19th century psychologist William James observed, "All our life is but a mass of habits." Ad men in the 20th century took this aphorism to. Charles Duhigg, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, has written an entertaining book to help us do just that, “ The Power of Habit.
The Power of Habit : Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business is a book by Charles Duhigg, a New York Times reporter, published in February 2012 by.
Purchase Featured Book. More on this book:. The 19th century psychologist William James observed, "All our life. is but a mass of habits. Ad men in the 20th century took this aphorism to heart. It wasn't enough to simply sell a product; the goal was to hook consumers and keep them coming back.
In his new book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Charles Duhigg, a business reporter for The New York Times.
explains how some companies have achieved enormous success by altering people's habits. By luck or design, they've been tapping into a powerful psychological pattern: the "habit loop. The habit loop is a three-part process. First, "there's a cue, which is kind of a trigger for an automatic behavior to start unfolding," Duhigg tells Morning Edition 's Renee Montagne. "There's a routine, which is the behavior itself. and then there's a reward, which tells our brain whether we should store this habit for future use or not.
Toothpaste is a perfect example of how companies put the habit loop to use. About a hundred years ago, says Duhigg, no one in America brushed his or her teeth. But when one of the nation's most prominent advertising executives, Claude C.
Hopkins, heard about a new toothpaste called Pepsodent, he thought he could make a killing. "Claude C. Hopkins had made his name creating habits around products and making them famous," Duhigg says. "He had these two simple rules: make a product into a daily habit — find some simple cue, something that's going to trigger the consumer — and second of all, you have to give them the reward. He intuited [the habit loop] years before laboratories had proven that it exists.
The cue Hopkins used to sell his toothpaste was the filmy plaque that forms naturally on teeth. "For years, people had felt a film on their teeth and had never worried about it, and you don't need toothpaste to get rid of it," Duhigg says. But Hopkins drew people's attention to it by creating posters that read, "Get rid of that film. Pepsodent gives you a beautiful smile. "For the first time, people started buying toothpaste.
Hopkins actually started the tooth-brushing habit in America with Pepsodent," Duhigg says. Duhigg points out that the toothpaste's mere ability to remove plaque would not have been enough to enshrine tooth-brushing into a daily routine.
A reward was needed: In this case, it was the tingling, clean feeling you get after brushing your teeth. When consumers did not brush their teeth, they missed that feeling. Charles Duhigg writes for the business section of The New York Times. Elizabeth Alter/Courtesy Random House hide caption.