| Sumario: | The theories of Viktor Protopopov (1880–1957) on habit formation are discussed. Protopopov started, in 1929, to repeat E. L. Thorndike's animal experiments on habit acquisition. In order to determine the conditions needed for habit formation, he used the natural experiment technique, in which dogs encountered environments that stopped them from reaching a stimulus–bait. Not all dogs formed the behavior needed to obtain the bait, and Protopopov accounted for his results within the framework of the Pavlovian theory of higher nervous activity, concluding that habits were acquired when an active animal provoked by a stimulus–bait encountered an environmental obstacle. The dogs attempted a series of phylogenetic behaviors until the stimulus–bait was reached, with these habits being retained to form an ontogenetic habit, and also learned not to produce the unsuccessful movements. Consistent with the Pavlovian theory, individual variations in habit formation were correlated with temperament types.
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