Habit formation refers to approaches where a person is trained to associate a behavior or chain of behaviors with a given cue, often by introducing rewards or punishment.
While traditional habit formation approaches derived largely from behaviorism and operant conditioning, many modern approaches emphasize the cognitive processes that mediate the behavioral response to cues or explore methods of modifying environments (either to reduce the frequency or salience of cues to undesired behaviors, or do the reverse for desired ones).
Many habit formation programs, e.g. BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits approach, emphasize reducing the scope of the desired behavior and scaling it over time with the person's growing ability.
