This is a journey through the emerging science of habit formation, a field of research that has quietly transformed our understanding of human behavior. Drawing on the findings of a new breed of 'habit scientists' working in both the public and private sector, from Procter andamp; Gamble, Apple, and Goldman Sachs to governments around the world, the book examines the specific ways in which people are learning to radically manipulate habits whether it's smoking cigarettes, buying a particular brand of dish detergent or automatically firing a gun at an enemy soldier. Once readers understand how habits really work, and how change occurs, they can engineer new habits or get rid of old ones with the same basic tools. This wake-up call will undoubtedly inspire people to re-think many aspects of their daily lives. Drawing on thousands of scholarly studies and behind-the-scenes interviews, The Power of Habit will be a high-spirited intellectual adventure story, told by one of our most perceptive and voraciously inquisitive journalists. The book is in three parts. Part one looks at individual habits: how to create new ones, how to transform bad ones into good ones, and how cues, cravings, routines and rewards work. The second part explores the habits of success, companies and leadership, and looks at how the corporate world manipulate your tastes so that it can know what you want before you do.

The third and final part looks at the habits of societies: how movements start, how campaigns change the world, and the legal/moral dimension to the behaviour of e.g. serial killers. Duhigg is a master of anecdote, and always finds the perfect story to guide us through each chapter's main ideas. So in the chapter on companies manipulating our habits to sell us stuff, he finds a statistician who knows when women are pregnant before they do. In the opening chapter on how our brain develops habits, he introduces us to Eugene, who can't form new memories or register what's going on due to brain damage, but can unconsciously learn new habits and skills. Other 'characters' include Alcoholics Anonymous, Starbucks and The London Underground.