Psychology Colloquia Series: Dr Ben Gardner

Time: 12.00pm - 1.00pm
Price: free

Join this meeting >> (link coming soon)

All are welcome to the Psychology Colloquia, where distinguished guest speakers present talks encompassing a diverse array of topics within the field of Psychology and beyond.

This week's speaker is Dr Benjamin Gardner. He is a Reader in Psychology at University of Surrey, and is recognised internationally as an expert researcher, lecturer and public speaker in the psychology of habitual behaviour. Over 15+ years of behavioural science research, he has published over 170 research papers and book chapters, mostly exploring how the concept of 'habit' can be drawn on to understand and change everyday human behaviours, with especial focus on health behaviours. He has given talks and hosted seminars and workshops with academic, practitioner, commercial and public audiences across the UK and Europe, and in Australia, Canada, Singapore, and USA. As of May 2024, his work has been cited over 15,000 times, including in more than 200 policy documents. Dr Gardner is founder and co-Director of the Habit Application and Theory group, and co-Lead of the Sustainability through Behaviour Change research programme at the University of Surrey Institute for Sustainability. He is co-Lead of the European Health Psychology Society Habit Special Interest Group. He holds editorial board positions at Health Psychology Review and Social Science & Medicine, and is a Consultant at British Journal of Health Psychology.

Abstract: Habitually deciding and habitually doing: applying the psychology of habit to understand and change behaviour

From our morning hygiene patterns to our pre-bedtime wind-down, much of our everyday behaviour is habitual and automatic, done repetitively with minimal forethought. But what is a ‘habitual behaviour'? What does it mean for a behaviour to be ‘automatic'? Are any behaviours purely automatic, undertaken with zero thought? This talk describes two recent advances in habit theory and application. First, I argue that habit can play two practically distinct roles in any behaviour: a person may ‘habitually decide' to act (habitual instigation), or they may ‘habitually do' the action (habitual execution), making progression through the action sequence more fluid. I show that the most studied effects of habit on action can be attributed to ‘habitual instigation', and that most habit change strategies focus on habitual instigation. Second, drawing on applications to sleep and physical activity, I describe recent work to develop ‘script elicitation', a method for eliciting and changing habitually executed routines to improve health and wellbeing.

This event will be held on Teams (link coming soon).

The series is organised by Dr Goffredina Spano (g.spano@kingston.ac.uk) and Dr Simona Cantarella (s.cantarella@kingston.ac.uk) from the Psychology Department. If you would like more information about the event, please feel free to email either of them. 

For further information about this event:

Contact: Lucy Raymond (Events Officer)
Email: lucy.raymond@kingston.ac.uk