Schwabe, L., & Wolf, O. T. (2011). Stress-induced modulation of instrumental behavior: From goal-directed to habitual control of action. Behavioural Brain Research, 219(2), 321-328.
If I’m reading that article correctly, I think they’re saying that if you learn something while under stress, you’re more likely to make a habit of it than if you learn it while not under stress. The text leading up to the footnote lead me to expect something about a connection between habitual vs instrumental learning and performance under stress:
Imagine the advantages of automatically setting aside an hour a day to exercise! Not only will you experience the health benefits, but if it’s an automatic rather than an intentional behavior, you’ll tend to exercise whether or not you feel motivated on given day, even under stress, even when you’re tired and drained after a bad day.
Am I misreading either the OP or the cited paper?
If I did understand it right, the cited paper supports the hypothesis that boot camps are effective. They teach people while they are under artificial stress so the resulting learnings are habitual rather than instrumental. It also explains why PTSD happens.
Were you able to find the actual article? I was able to access the PDF using my university password, which is why I couldn’t post it. What I gathered from reading part, not all, of the article is that behaviours that are automatic, i.e. controlled by habit, tend to take over under stress. Thus, if your decision to exercise is consciously controlled, i.e. it isn’t yet a habit, then it becomes much harder to choose to exercise under stress, and you’ll tend to revert to actions that are habitual, i.e. going on the Internet and eating junk food if those are your habits.
I did only read part of the article in detail and skimmed the rest. Bad habit.
Dr. Manhattan’s link worked for me, both at home and at the office, on two different machines.
Reading section 3, right column of page 3, bottom of the page, it seems that the stress is applied at the time the behavior is learned. I don’t know how long these things linger, so maybe it’s still present at the time the learned behavior is performed, since it’s performed just after it’s learned.
They acknowledge this ambiguity at section 3.1, left side of page 5. They make it clear that the effect (where stress slows the rate at which unrewarded behavior extinguishes) is still present if the stress is applied directly before performing the behavior, after the behavior is already learned. The effect is stronger if stress is present at both the time of learning and the time of performance, though.
If I’m reading that article correctly, I think they’re saying that if you learn something while under stress, you’re more likely to make a habit of it than if you learn it while not under stress. The text leading up to the footnote lead me to expect something about a connection between habitual vs instrumental learning and performance under stress:
Am I misreading either the OP or the cited paper?
If I did understand it right, the cited paper supports the hypothesis that boot camps are effective. They teach people while they are under artificial stress so the resulting learnings are habitual rather than instrumental. It also explains why PTSD happens.
Were you able to find the actual article? I was able to access the PDF using my university password, which is why I couldn’t post it. What I gathered from reading part, not all, of the article is that behaviours that are automatic, i.e. controlled by habit, tend to take over under stress. Thus, if your decision to exercise is consciously controlled, i.e. it isn’t yet a habit, then it becomes much harder to choose to exercise under stress, and you’ll tend to revert to actions that are habitual, i.e. going on the Internet and eating junk food if those are your habits.
I did only read part of the article in detail and skimmed the rest. Bad habit.
Dr. Manhattan’s link worked for me, both at home and at the office, on two different machines.
Reading section 3, right column of page 3, bottom of the page, it seems that the stress is applied at the time the behavior is learned. I don’t know how long these things linger, so maybe it’s still present at the time the learned behavior is performed, since it’s performed just after it’s learned.
They acknowledge this ambiguity at section 3.1, left side of page 5. They make it clear that the effect (where stress slows the rate at which unrewarded behavior extinguishes) is still present if the stress is applied directly before performing the behavior, after the behavior is already learned. The effect is stronger if stress is present at both the time of learning and the time of performance, though.