The Power of Habit: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Sleepwalking and sleep terrors show how powerful the unconscious mind is. After all, the unconscious is primarily responsible for forming and implementing habit loops. Thus, much like Eugene Pauly’s walks around his neighborhood, sleep terrors are automatic, unconscious habits that the conscious mind cannot recognize or stop. This is why Brian Thomas was acquitted: the U.S. justice system generally doesn’t hold people responsible for behaviors that they didn’t consciously intend (or consciously enable through negligence or recklessness).

Bachmann’s gambling got worse because it became her primary strategy for coping with negative feelings. She developed an addiction because she learned to crave the calm and emotional release that she found while gambling. Meanwhile, much like Andrew Pole at Target, Harrah’s used complex data analytics to try and exploit Bachmann’s addiction. While Target’s targeted coupons don’t necessarily harm its customers, Harrah’s offers clearly do. Therefore, they raise an ethical question similar to Bachmann’s behavior: is it acceptable for corporations to exploit bad habits that people struggle to control?

Habib’s research shows that gambling blurs the line between free will and compulsion. Namely, while they are gambling, people simply play out an automatic habit loop—they don’t really make free, conscious decisions. This has important ethical implications. Namely, if gamblers do not truly control their behavior—and their only sin is being born with the wrong brain chemistry—then perhaps they should not be held responsible for their gambling.

Bachmann and Thomas’s actions led to tragic suffering, but neither of them truly controlled those actions. Thus, by simply calling for “personal responsibility,” the court seemed to overlook the real moral issue at stake in Bachmann’s case: she wasn’t capable of acting responsibly. Meanwhile, the court also overlooked the way Harrah’s manipulated Bachmann’s habit loop to take her money. At the same time, there’s still an obvious difference between Bachmann and Thomas. Namely, Bachmann could have stopped her bad habits—even if this would have been incredibly difficult.

Duhigg’s argument about people’s moral responsibility for their habits ultimately rests on the principle of moral autonomy, or free will. Essentially, he thinks that people are morally responsible for their habits because they can control them through their own free will. It’s true that many habits are difficult to change in the moment, but if Duhigg’s book has proven anything, it’s that people have power to control their habits over time. Brian Thomas is a very rare exception because he couldn’t have saved his wife of his own free will—instead, his free will had no power over his unconscious habits. But Duhigg suggests that the vast majority of habits are more like Angie Bachmann’s: they’re controllable, even if actually controlling them can be very difficult.

William James’s youth confirms two of Duhigg’s central theses: good habits are the key to a successful life, and people have to believe in themselves in order to successfully change their habits. Of course, this connects to Duhigg’s argument about morality because people who believe that they control their habits are also likely to take responsibility for those habits’ effects.

To conclude his book, Duhigg reiterates the stakes of taking habits seriously. The water metaphors emphasize one of his central points: habits are completely mundane and incredibly powerful at the same time. Finally, Duhigg hopes that his readers can learn to view habits as tools for self-improvement that are fundamentally within their own control.