I am.writing an article on the difference between experience and habit. I am involved in education and find that they are best of friends and worse of enemies.
Experience = ongoing process
Habit= tight fitting nental garment.
What are your options and research findings?
Experience I suggest comes before habit, the latter developing from the former. Someone can have experience of driving, but it then becomes habit. If a new experience presents itself, a near miss with another vehicle, that experience becomes part of the habit.
I view habitation as more of an automatic response to external cues and experience comes with an accumulation of experiences over time.
Rich
Dear Holly - what a lovely question. Yes, I agree with Richard Kensinger that habits are an automatic response to external cues but I would also add to internal cues as well. We have a habitual way of seeing (considering) certain events, or people which results in us responding in a fixed way - interestingly the outside event only needs to have some resemblance to something or someone in our past, and we respond as though the present event was the same as the past - the event or person has provoked an inner experience (in us) to which we have responded in a fixed way. To overcome living the present as though it is the past, we need to change our understanding through the expansion of our consciousness. This can be done through therapy or meditation.
Warm regards Tina
Let me also add something about experiences. Experiences can be linked to our senses, ie to really know a strawberry we need to pop it in our mouth and bite it - that gives us an experience of 'strawberry'. It is unique although we often assume that everyone has the same experience. An experience is lived and it is impossible to put words to the whole of our experience.
There are also experiences of a spiritual kind that are not linked to our senses but to our senses below our senses or mystical senses. In deep states of meditation, these are experienced. This is when poets score as they are able to communicate these experiences in ways that appeal to the heart of the person with whom the experience is being shared.
Hope this helps you - warm regards Tina
PS I talk of the senses below the senses in my article on Freud - Article Mesoderm: The Possible Key to the Organic Basis of Freud's Theories
Dear Holly B. F. Warren,
I agree with Richard Kensinger and Tina Lindhard. I also see habit as an automatic response which can be caused by either an internal or external cue. I see experience as an accumulated body of knowledge, with habits being developed through experience. Relating to what Tina Lindhard has said, some researchers believe that our previous knowledge is organized in abstract structures known as schemata (Rumelhart, 1980). They guide our way of viewing the world and how we react to present events. Schemata have slots that need to be instantiated for the whole concept to be activated above threshold. Another point brought by Tina Lindhard reminded me of a theory of working memory in which the function of this system is to enable the change of what is registered in our long-term memory. This is in a chapter by Klaus Oberauer in the book Working Memory: State of the Science. BTW, this discussion is great!
One distinction that should also be made is between a habit and an addiction or compulsion. A habit can more easily be modified or even discontinued. An addiction related to substances typically has a biological and genetic component that makes discontinuing the addiction or addictive behaviors more difficult.
What an interesting discussion you have started, Holly.
I looked to see if anyone had put their thoughts on Google (although you probably did that and saw this!)
https://thoughtsnlifeblog.com/2021/01/26/experience-vs-habit/
But for me, experience seems to suggest when you have done something repeatedly and learnt by gaining a fuller, broader understanding. When I was nursing, I was very experienced in my field because I was treating different people and they were never the same, but previous cases had added to my experience and each new one taught me something.
But I think habit is more what you do without thinking. You walk into a darkened room and automatically switch on the light. Sometimes you might find yourself doing something that you wish you didn't do; which makes it a bad habit. I had a relative who used to squeak her shoes by rubbing her feet together. We never mentioned it but I think if we had done, she would have not found it easy to stop.
Good luck with your article. This might be too late to help you, but it would be lovely to read it at a later date, when you add it to ResearchGate! I see you've got a lot of interesting looking preprints, articles and presentations,
Mary
Someone can have experience of driving, but it then becomes a habit. If a new experience presents itself, a near miss with another vehicle, that experience becomes part of the habit.
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