The Habitual Tendencies Questionnaire: A tool for psychometric individual differences research

Habits are automatic responses to learned stimuli or contextual cues that are insensitive to goals. Although habits may allow for automated behaviours that increase efficiency in our daily lives, an over-reliance on habits has been suggested to contribute to disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). There are currently few established measures of individual differences in habitual tendencies. To fill this gap, the present study generated and validated a novel 11-item scale, the Habitual Tendencies Questionnaire (HTQ), to measure individual differences in habitual tendencies in the general population. In Study 1, factor analysis revealed three underlying subcomponents of the HTQ: Compulsivity, Preference for Regularity, and Aversion to Novelty, with Compulsivity showing the strongest association with subclinical OCD symptomatology. Study 2 validated the HTQ and replicated the findings of Study 1 in a larger sample, and explored relationships with other personality traits. The results emphasise the importance of measuring individual variation in habitual thinking styles, illustrating that different facets of habitual tendencies may contribute to diverse behavioural and clinical outcomes. The present investigation provides a new, reliable way of measuring habitual tendencies and has important implications for future explorations into the nature of individual differences from a dimensional perspective to psychiatry.