According to Guthrie, how does a habit become strong, and how can a strong habit be broken? Using Guthrie’s theory, what advice would you give someone who wants to quit smoking?
What will be an ideal response?
For Guthrie, a habit is an act that has become associated with a large number of
stimuli—the more stimuli that elicit the act, the stronger is the habit. According to
Guthrie, there is one general rule for breaking undesirable habits: Observe the stimuli
that elicit the undesirable act and perform another act in the presence of those stimuli.
Then the new, desirable act will be elicited by those stimuli instead of the old,
undesirable act. For someone who wants to quit smoking, he or she should determine
which stimuli make him or her want to have a cigarette (and there may be many since
smoking is a habit that is associated with many stimuli), and do something else instead
of having a cigarette in response to those stimuli. For example, when Guthrie quit
smoking, he would eat an apple in the presence of the stimuli that made him want to
have a cigarette.
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