The Moral Consequences of Habits Theme Analysis

Because habit change is such a powerful tool, it can do immense good—or considerable evil. In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg surveys examples that span the whole moral spectrum. Many cases of habit change are obviously morally good—like overcoming violent tendencies or stopping medical malpractice. But when people develop or fail to overcome their evil habits, Duhigg asks, who is at fault? Habits are complicated because, while they are often involuntary, people ultimately have the power to change them. Moreover, habits challenge simple notions of freedom and autonomy because they show that people really only have partial control over their decisions. In fact, powerful organizations like governments and corporations often profit by manipulating people into developing bad habits. It becomes somewhat unclear, then, whether people with bad habits are the victims or the instigators of their own behavior. While Duhigg doesn’t provide a total moral theory of habits in this book, he does suggest that—with very few exceptions—people are ethically responsible for their habits because they’re capable of changing them.

First, Duhigg acknowledges that the tools for habit change that he outlines in the book can also be used for evil, like when people manipulate others’ habits in harmful or unethical ways. For instance, to determine if their customers are pregnant, Target buys and analyzes customer data without those customers’ consent. Duhigg acknowledges that many customers feel violated, manipulated, and surveilled by this policy (which Target hides by mixing targeted ads and coupons with random ones that they don’t expect customers to use). In particular, this policy challenges consumers’ belief that they are truly in control of their decisions—it seems to violate their autonomy by planting ideas in their head. Worse still, the casino company Harrah’s gave compulsive gambler Angie Bachmann free flights, hotel rooms, and credit in order to lure her back to gambling even though she was trying to quit. (She eventually went bankrupt, and Harrah’s sued her.) If it weren’t for the incentives from Harrah’s, gamblers like Bachmann would be much more likely to quit and stay financially solvent. Does this make the company’s behavior unethical? At the very least, Duhigg affirms, Harrah’s took advantage of Bachmann’s bad habits and made it harder for her to quit. But this doesn’t mean she’s not still responsible for her decision to gamble. Thus, Duhigg suggests that manipulation might explain bad habits, but it doesn’t excuse them.

Next, Duhigg concludes that people are morally responsible for their bad habits—as long as they are aware of them—precisely because they still have the freedom and capability to change them. Still, this answer isn’t obvious. Habits are complicated because they are neither totally conscious nor totally involuntary. In other words, they blur the line between free will and coercion. As the neuroscientist Reza Habib has pointed out, compulsive gamblers feel that they can’t stop and genuinely lose control of their free will while they’re playing. If this is true—that people with bad habits don’t behave badly out of their own free will—then they aren’t necessarily responsible for their actions. However, Duhigg thinks there’s a difference between controlling habits in the moment and choosing to reform them at other times. In other words, while compulsive gamblers might not be able to stop once they’ve started betting, they can choose to seek help and change when they’re not in the middle of gambling. Even if people with bad habits temporarily lose control over themselves, then, they regain control in other moments. This means that they still have the power to reform their bad habits.

Finally, Duhigg thinks that knowing about and being able to reform one’s bad habits is enough to be morally responsible for them. He points out that this fits with the ordinary legal concept of guilt: if people freely chose to do something wrong—even if their choice was based on negligence or ignorance—they are morally responsible for their behavior. As a result, people like Angie Bachmann are responsible for their actions, even if they’ve also been manipulated by bad actors. The only exception, Duhigg argues, is in cases where people literally cannot know about their bad habits. He uses Brian Thomas as an example. Thomas accidentally killed his wife during a night terror (an unconscious episode that is like a violent kind of sleepwalking). Neuroscientists know that, during night terrors, the basal ganglia are in control—which means people are acting according to habit and cannot stop their violent behavior. Since Thomas literally could not have predicted, stopped, or known about the danger he posed to his wife, Duhigg agrees with the court that he wasn’t morally responsible for her murder. But this example shows that the bar for escaping moral responsibility for bad habits is extremely high: in most cases, anyone who knows they have a problem also has a responsibility to fix that problem.

Duhigg suggests that it’s unethical to change people’s habits by psychologically manipulating them. But he argues that people are also responsible for their habits, even when those habits are the result of manipulation. For Duhigg, then, people’s ability to control their habits means that they are truly free, autonomous decision-makers. If they can change their habits, they are morally responsible for those habits—even if they struggle or fail to change them. For instance, Duhigg believes that Harrah’s behaved immorally, but that Angie Bachmann was still responsible for her own bankruptcy because she could and should have sought help. (The only exceptions are cases like Brian Thomas’s, when people are literally unaware of their habits.) Thus, people with bad habits are quite often both the victims and perpetrators of evil.