In the new Listener, on sale from July 14, 2012

By Toby Manhire|  Published on July 13, 2012 | Online Only

Advances in habit-kicking, and the rest.

Quitters rejoice. This week’s cover story looks at a range of scientific developments that are helping those wanting to kick habits including smoking, boozing and overeating.

A taste of James Robinson’s feature:

As research students have found, the addictive properties of nicotine and alcohol, and even the buzz from problem gambling or compulsive shopping, are only a part of the picture

Over time, the brain, and in particular the subconscious, assembles a whole infrastructure of cues and reward-feedback loops around a particular activity that transforms it from something pleasurable into a hardto- beat compulsion

And our assumptions about why we do what we do are often wrong. For instance, is the urge to smoke all about stress relief, as popularly thought, or, as in Johansson’s case, is it an antidote to boredom? Or is it an excuse to have some “me time”?

Marshalling the research, New York Times investigative journalist Charles Duhigg has written The Power of Habit, setting out the complete anatomy of human habit as science now understands it, and outlining ways we can rewire our brains to outsmart ourselves, he suggests, depends on steadily – even stealthily – substituting cues and associated habits with new activities: by changing routines, for example, and reevaluating the way we tend to think about a particular activity.

Elsewhere in the new issue, Joanne Black writes on women in the police. Months after the scarcity of women in senior management roles in the New Zealand Police was identified as a significant concern, there is just one woman among the top 52 officers.
Pete Carter looks at a project to build a library in Bougainville – led by author Lloyd Jones, who set his Man Booker-nominated Mister Pip there.
Guyon Espiner talks to Labour’s fourth-ranked MP, Jacinda Ardern. Can she live up to all the hype about her prospects?
In arts, new books from Michael Palin, Michael Frayn and Andrea Eames, plus a children’s picture book roundup. Plus director Costa Botes, the NZSO’s The Valkyrie reviewed, and cultural curdmudgeonliness from Hamish Keith.