Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

087 Habituation

Repeated exposure to a stimulus reduces the response to that stimulus.

Habituation is the diminishing of a physiological or emotional response to a stimulus upon repeated exposure. For example, people living in dense cities habituate to the sounds of city noise such as cars honking, sirens blaring, etc., which means they decreasingly notice such sounds over time with repeated exposure. The phenomenon is likely an evolved mechanism to attend to stimuli when they are novel but then to increasingly filter those stimuli as it becomes clear that they pose no threat—i.e., upon repeated exposures, nothing bad occurs.¹

Almost any response or behavior can become habituated: the fleeting thrill of winning a contest, fear of a neighborhood ...