Neal, D. T., Wood, W., Wu, M., &Kurlander, D. (2011). The pull of the past: When do habits persist despite conflict with motives?.
To identify the factors that disrupt and maintain habit performance, two field experiments tested the conditions under which people eat out of habit, leading them to resist motivational influences. Habitual popcorn eaters at a cinema were minimally influenced by their hunger or how much they liked the food, and they ate equal amounts of stale and fresh popcorn. Yet, mechanisms of automaticity influenced habit performance: ...