(Random House, $28)
If you’re seeking self-improvement, “an ever-growing army of charlatans” stands ready to take your money, said Jesse Singal in TheDailyBeast.com. Charles Duhigg, a New York Times business reporter, might offer real help. In his first book, Duhigg “brings a heaping, much-needed dose of social science and psychology” to the subject of personal habits and offers “a clear, convincing” approach to how any of us can establish good ones and discard the bad. The key is in recognizing that every habit has three components: a cue (such as post-lunch boredom), the behavior itself (eating a cookie, perhaps), and the reward one enjoys (slight relief from boredom). Duhigg doesn’t promise that the cue can be eliminated or the reward forfeited; “habit loops” are fairly indelible. The cookie, however, appears to be eminently replaceable.
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Some of Duhigg’s juiciest, most “confounding” anecdotes concern the ways marketers exploit the power of habit, said David Dobbs in Wired.com. Knowing that a major life event presents a rare chance to change a consumer’s buying habits, Target, for instance, has devised an algorithm that allows it to identify first-time mothers during their second trimester. But is Target really any more Machiavellian than the rest of us? said David Brooks in The New York Times. It’s “sort of disturbing” that we all accept that to become effective individuals, we must “coolly appraise” our unconscious habits and then devise strategies to trick our brains onto a different path. Duhigg never claims that all behavior is habit. But you couldn’t be blamed for wondering if we’ve arrived at a moment when every relationship is manipulative—“including your relationship with yourself.”
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