Skilled athletes are less likely to act on mindless habits because their movements are so refined.
April 20, 2026
Original Paper
Two facets of automaticity: Inverse relationship between motor automaticity and habitual control
PsyArXiv · xatzp_v2
The Takeaway
Popular psychology often lumps physical skills and bad habits into the same category of automatic behavior. Research now shows that motor automaticity and habitual responding are actually opposites. The more fluid and expert a specific movement becomes, the more the brain remains flexible in how it chooses to use that movement. Mastering a physical craft creates a layer of control that prevents you from acting on autopilot. Learning a skill deeply might be the best way to stop yourself from doing things without thinking.
From the abstract
Repeated practice produces both motor automaticity (action fluency) and inflexible habitual responding (non-deliberate actions). Although traditionally assumed to reflect a unified automaticity process, their relationship remains largely untested. Using a novel paradigm designed to enhance and measure habit expression (assessed via outcome devaluation) alongside motor automaticity (indexed by established markers including timing consistency and execution speed), we found a counterintuitive inver