Omission bias is the phenomenon in which people prefer omission (inaction) over commission (action), and tend to judge harm as a result of commission more negatively than harm as a result of omission. It can occur due to a number of processes, including psychological inertia, the perception of transaction costs, and the perception that commissions are more causal than omissions.
In social political terms the Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes how basic human rights are to be assessed in article 2, as “without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” Criteria that are often subject to one or another form of omission bias. It is controversial as to whether omission bias is a cognitive bias or is often rational. The bias is often showcased through the trolley problem and has also been described as an explanation for the endowment effect and status quo bias.
Examples and Applications
Taoism may gnomically promote inaction:
“If you follow the Way you shall do less each day. You shall do less and less until you do nothing at all. And if you do nothing at all, there is nothing that is left undone.”
Spranca, Minsk and Baron extended the omission bias to judgements of morality of choices.
In one scenario, John, a tennis player, would be facing a tough opponent the next day in a decisive match. John knows his opponent is allergic to a food substance.
Subjects were presented with two conditions: John recommends the food containing the allergen to hurt his opponent’s performance, or the opponent himself orders the allergenic food, and John says nothing. A majority of people judged that John’s action of recommending the allergenic food as more immoral than John’s inaction of not informing the opponent of the allergenic substance.
The effect has also held in real-world athletic arenas: NBA statistics showcased that referees called 50% fewer fouls in the final moments of close games.
An additional real-world example is when parents decide not to vaccinate their children because of the potential chance of death – even when the probability the vaccination will cause death is much less likely than death from the disease prevented.
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A status quo bias or default bias is a cognitive bias which results from a preference for the maintenance of one’s existing state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss or gain. Corresponding to different alternatives, this current baseline or default option is perceived and evaluated by individuals as a positive.
Status quo bias should be distinguished from a rational preference for the status quo, as when the current state of affairs is objectively superior to the available alternatives, or when imperfect information is a significant problem. A large body of evidence, however, shows that status quo bias frequently affects human decision-making. Status quo bias should also be distinguished from psychological inertia, which refers to a lack of intervention in the current course of affairs.
The bias intersects with other non-rational cognitive processes such as loss aversion, in which losses comparative to gains are weighed to a greater extent. Further non-rational cognitive processes include existence bias, endowment effect, longevity, mere exposure, and regret avoidance. Experimental evidence for the detection of status quo bias is seen through the use of the reversal test. A vast amount of experimental and field examples exist. Behaviour in regard to economics, retirement plans, health, and ethical choices show evidence of the status quo bias.
Examples
Status quo experiments have been conducted over many fields with Kahneman, Thaler, and Knetsch (1991) creating experiments on the endowment effect, loss aversion and status quo bias. Experiments have also been conducted on the effect of status quo bias on contributions to retirement plans and Fevrier & Gay (2004) study on status quo bias in organ donations consent.
Type
Outline
Questionnaire
1. Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) demonstrated status quo bias using a questionnaire in which subjects faced a series of decision problems, which were alternately framed to be with and without a pre-existing status quo position. 2. Subjects tended to remain with the status quo when such a position was offered to them. 3. Results of the experiment further show that status quo bias advantage relatively increases with the number of alternatives given within the choice set. 4. Furthermore, a weaker bias resulted from when the individual exhibited a strong discernible preference for a chosen alternative.
Hypothetical Choice Tasks
1. Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) gave subjects a hypothetical choice task in the following “neutral” version, in which no status quo was defined: “You are a serious reader of the financial pages but until recently you have had few funds to invest. 2. That is when you inherited a large sum of money from your great-uncle. 3. You are considering different portfolios. 4. Your choices are to invest in: a moderate-risk company, a high-risk company, treasury bills, municipal bonds.” 5. Other subjects were presented with the same problem but with one of the options designated as the status quo. 6. In this case, the opening passage continued: “A significant portion of this portfolio is invested in a moderate risk company … (The tax and broker commission consequences of any changes are insignificant.)” 7. The result was that an alternative became much more popular when it was designated as the status quo.
Electric Power Consumers
1. California electric power consumers were asked about their preferences regarding trade-offs between service reliability and rates. 2. The respondents fell into two groups, one with much more reliable service than the other. 3. Each group was asked to state a preference among six combinations of reliability and rates, with one of the combinations designated as the status quo. 4. A strong bias to the status quo was observed. 5. Of those in the high-reliability group, 60.2% chose the status quo, whereas a mere 5.7% chose the low-reliability option that the other group had been experiencing, despite its lower rates. 6. Similarly, of those in the low reliability group, 58.3 chose their low-reliability status quo, and only 5.8 chose the high-reliability option.
Automotive Insurance Consumers
1. The US states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania inadvertently ran a real-life experiment providing evidence of status quo bias in the early 1990s. 2. As part of tort law reform programs, citizens were offered two options for their automotive insurance: an expensive option giving them full right to sue and a less expensive option with restricted rights to sue. 3. In New Jersey the cheaper insurance was the default and in Pennsylvania the expensive insurance was the default. 4. Johnson, Hershey, Meszaros and Kunreuther (1993) conducted a questionnaire to test whether consumers will stay with the default option for car insurance. 5. They found that only 20% of New Jersey drivers changed from the default option and got the more expensive option. 6. Also, only 25% of Pennsylvanian drivers changed from the default option and got the cheaper insurance. 7.Therefore, framing and status quo bias can have significant financial consequences.
General Practitioners
1. Boonen, Donkers and Schut created two discrete choice experiments for Dutch residents to conclude a consumer’s preference for general practitioners and whether they would leave their current practitioner. 2. The Dutch health care system was chosen as general practitioners play the role of a gatekeeper. 3. The experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of status quo bias on a consumer’s decision to leave their current practitioner, with knowledge of other practitioners and their current relationship with their practitioner determining the role status quo bias plays. 4. Continued below.
Through the questionnaire it was shown that respondents were aware of the lack of added benefit aligned with their current general practitioner and were aware of the quality differences between potential practitioners. 35% of respondents were willing to a pay a co-payment to stay with their current general practitioner, while only 30% were willing to switch to another practitioner in exchange for a financial gain. These consumers were willing to pay a considerable amount to continue going to their current practitioner up to €17.32. For general practitioners the value assigned by the consumer to staying with their current one exceeded the total value assigned to all other attributes tested such as discounts or a certificate of quality.
Within the discrete choice experiment the respondents were offered a choice between their current practitioner and a hypothetical provider with identical attributes. The respondents were 40% more likely to choose their current practitioner than if both options were hypothetical providers, which would result in the probability being 50% for both. It was found that status quo bias had a massive impact on which general practitioner the respondents would choose. Despite consumers being offered positive financial incentives, qualitative incentives or the addition of negative financial incentives respondents were still extremely hesitant to switch from their current practitioner. The impact of status quo bias was determined as making attempts to channel consumers away from the general practitioner they are currently seeing a daunting task.
Explanations
Status quo bias has been attributed to a combination of loss aversion and the endowment effect, two ideas relevant to prospect theory. An individual weighs the potential losses of switching from the status quo more heavily than the potential gains; this is due to the prospect theory value function being steeper in the loss domain. As a result, the individual will prefer not to switch at all. In other words, we tend to oppose change unless the benefits outweigh the risks. However, the status quo bias is maintained even in the absence of gain/loss framing: for example, when subjects were asked to choose the colour of their new car, they tended towards one colour arbitrarily framed as the status quo. Loss aversion, therefore, cannot wholly explain the status quo bias, with other potential causes including regret avoidance, transaction costs and psychological commitment.
Rational Routes to Status Quo Maintenance
A status quo bias can also be a rational route if there are cognitive or informational limitations.
Informational Limitations
Decision outcomes are rarely certain, nor is the utility they may bring. Because some errors are more costly than others (Haselton & Nettle, 2006), sticking with what worked in the past is a safe option, as long as previous decisions are “good enough”.
Cognitive Limitations
Cognitive limitations of status quo bias involve the cognitive cost of choice, in which decisions are more susceptible to postponement as increased alternatives are added to the choice set. Moreover, mental effort needed to maintain status quo alternatives would often be lesser and easier, resulting in a superior choice’s benefit being outweighed by decision-making cognitive costs. Consequently, maintenance of current or previous state of affairs would be regarded as the easier alternative.
Irrational Routes
The irrational maintenance of the status quo bias links and confounds many cognitive biases.
Existence Bias
An assumption of longevity and goodness are part of the status quo bias. People treat existence as a prima facie case for goodness, aesthetic and longevity increases this preference. The status quo bias affects people’s preferences; people report preferences for what they are likely rather than unlikely to receive. People simply assume, with little reason or deliberation, the goodness of existing states.
Longevity is a corollary of the existence bias: if existence is good, longer existence should be better. This thinking resembles quasi-evolutionary notions of “survival of the fittest”, and also the augmentation principle in attribution theory.
Psychological inertia is another reason used to explain a bias towards the status quo. Another explanation is fear of regret in making a wrong decision, i.e. If we choose a partner, when we think there could be someone better out there.
Mere Exposure
Mere exposure is an explanation for the status quo bias. Existing states are encountered more frequently than non-existent states and because of this they will be perceived as more true and evaluated more preferably. One way to increase liking for something is repeated exposure over time.
Loss Aversion
Loss aversion also leads to greater regret for action than for inaction; more regret is experienced when a decision changes the status quo than when it maintains it. Together these forces provide an advantage for the status quo; people are motivated to do nothing or to maintain current or previous decisions. Change is avoided, and decision makers stick with what has been done in the past.
Changes from the status quo will typically involve both gains and losses, with the change having good overall consequences if the gains outweigh these losses. A tendency to overemphasize the avoidance of losses will thus favour retaining the status quo, resulting in a status quo bias. Even though choosing the status quo may entail forfeiting certain positive consequences, when these are represented as forfeited “gains” they are psychologically given less weight than the “losses” that would be incurred if the status quo were changed.
The loss aversion explanation for the status quo bias has been challenged by David Gal and Derek Rucker who argue that evidence for loss aversion (i.e. a tendency to avoid losses more than to pursue gains) is confounded with a tendency towards inertia (a tendency to avoid intervention more than to intervene in the course of affairs). Inertia, in this sense, is related to omission bias, except it need not be a bias but might be perfectly rational behaviour stemming from transaction costs or lack of incentive to intervene due to fuzzy preferences.
Omission Bias
Omission bias may account for some of the findings previously ascribed to status quo bias. Omission bias is diagnosed when a decision maker prefers a harmful outcome that results from an omission to a less harmful outcome that results from an action.
Overall implications of a study conducted by Ilana Ritov and Jonathan Baron, regarding status quo and omission biases, reveal that omission bias may further be diagnosed when the decision maker is unwilling to take preference from any of the available options given to them, thus enabling reduction of the number of decisions where utility comparison and weight is unavoidable.
Detection
The reversal test: when a proposal to change a certain parameter is thought to have bad overall consequences, consider a change to the same parameter in the opposite direction. If this is also thought to have bad overall consequences, then the onus is on those who reach these conclusions to explain why our position cannot be improved through changes to this parameter. If they are unable to do so, then we have reason to suspect that they suffer from status quo bias. The rationale of the reversal test is: if a continuous parameter admits of a wide range of possible values, only a tiny subset of which can be local optima, then it is prima facie implausible that the actual value of that parameter should just happen to be at one of these rare local optima.
Neural Activity
A study found that erroneous status quo rejections have a greater neural impact than erroneous status quo acceptances. This asymmetry in the genesis of regret might drive the status quo bias on subsequent decisions.
A study was done using a visual detection task in which subjects tended to favour the default when making difficult, but not easy, decisions. This bias was suboptimal in that more errors were made when the default was accepted. A selective increase in sub-thalamic nucleus (STN) activity was found when the status quo was rejected in the face of heightened decision difficulty. Analysis of effective connectivity showed that inferior frontal cortex, a region more active for difficult decisions, exerted an enhanced modulatory influence on the STN during switches away from the status quo.
Research by University College London scientists that examines the neural pathways involved in ‘status quo bias’ in the human brain and found that the more difficult the decision we face, the more likely we are not to act. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), looked at the decision-making of participants taking part in a tennis ‘line judgement’ game while their brains were scanned using functional MRI (fMRI). The 16 study participants were asked to look at a cross between two tramlines on a screen while holding down a ‘default’ key. They then saw a ball land in the court and had to make a decision as to whether it was in or out. On each trial, the computer signalled which was the current default option – ‘in’ or ‘out’. The participants continued to hold down the key to accept the default and had to release it and change to another key to reject the default. The results showed a consistent bias towards the default, which led to errors. As the task became more difficult, the bias became even more pronounced. The fMRI scans showed that a region of the brain known as the sub-thalamic nucleus (STN) was more active in the cases when the default was rejected. Also, greater flow of information was seen from a separate region sensitive to difficulty (the prefrontal cortex) to the STN. This indicates that the STN plays a key role in overcoming status quo bias when the decision is difficult.
Behavioural Economics and the Default Position
Against this background, two behavioural economists devised an opt-out plan to help employees of a particular company build their retirement savings. In an opt-out plan, the employees are automatically enrolled unless they explicitly ask to be excluded. They found evidence for status quo bias and other associated effects. The impact of defaults on decision making due to status quo bias is not purely due to subconscious bias, as it has been found that even when disclosing the intent of the default to consumers, the effect of the default is not reduced.
An experiment conducted by Sen Geng, regarding status quo bias and decision time allocation, reveal that individuals allocate more attention to default options in comparison to alternatives. This is due to individuals who are mainly risk-averse who seek to attain greater expected utility and decreased subjective uncertainty in making their decision. Furthermore, by optimally allocating more time and asymmetric attention to default options or positions, the individual’s estimate of the default’s value is consequently more precise than estimates of alternatives. This behaviour thus reflects the individual’s asymmetric choice error, and is therefore an indication of status quo bias.
Conflict
Status-quo educational bias can be both a barrier to political progress and a threat to the state’s legitimacy and argue that the values of stability, compliance, and patriotism underpin important reasons for status quo bias that appeal not to the substantive merits of existing institutions but merely to the fact that those institutions are the status quo.
Relevant Fields
The status quo bias is seen in important real life decisions; it has been found to be prominent in data on selections of health care plans and retirement programmes.
Politics
There is a belief that preference for the status quo represents a core component of conservative ideology in societies where government power is limited and laws restricting actions of individuals exist. Conversely, in liberal societies, movements to impose restrictions on individuals or governments are met with widespread opposition by those that favour the status quo. Regardless of the type of society, the bias tends to hinder progressive movements in the absence of a reaction or backlash against the powers that be.
Ethics
Status quo bias may be responsible for much of the opposition to human enhancement in general and to genetic cognitive enhancement in particular. Some ethicists argue, however, that status quo bias may not be irrational in such cases. The rationality of status quo bias is also an important question in the ethics of disability.
Education
Education can (sometimes unintentionally) encourage children’s belief in the substantive merits of a particular existing law or political institution, where the effect does not derive from an improvement in their ability or critical thinking about that law or institution. However, this biasing effect is not automatically illegitimate or counterproductive: a balance between social inculcation and openness needs to be maintained.
Given that educational curriculums are developed by Governments and delivered by individuals with their own political thoughts and feelings, the content delivered may be inadvertently affected by bias. When Governments implement certain policies, they become the status quo and are then presented as such to children in the education system. Whether through intentional or unintentional means, when learning about a topic, educators may favour the status quo. They may simply not know the full extent of the arguments against the status quo or may not be able to present an unbiased account of each side because of their personal biases.
Health
An experiment to determine if a status-quo bias, toward current medication even when better alternatives are offered—, exists in a stated-choice study among asthma patients who take prescription combination maintenance medications. The results of this study indicate that the status quo bias may exist in stated-choice studies, especially with medications that patients must take daily such as asthma maintenance medications. Stated-choice practitioners should include a current medication in choice surveys to control for this bias.
Retirement Plans
A study in 1986 examined the effect of status quo bias on those planning their retirement savings when given the yearly choice between two investment funds. Participants were able to choose how to proportionally split their retirement savings between the two funds at the beginning of each year. After each year, they were able to amend their chose split without switching costs as their preferences changed. Even though the two funds had vastly different returns in both absolute and relative terms, the majority of participants never switched the preferences across the trial period. Status quo bias was also more evident in older participants as they preferred to stay with their original investment, rather than switching as new information came to light.
In Negotiation
Korobkin’s has studied a link between negotiation and status quo bias in 1998. In this studies shows that in negotiating contracts favour inaction that exist in situations in which a legal standard and defaults from contracts will administer absent action. This involves a biased opinion opposed to alternative solutions. Heifetz’s and Segev’s study in 2004 found support for existence of a toughness bias. It is like so-called endowment effect which affects seller’s behaviour.
Price Management
Status quo bias provides a maintenance role in the theory-practice gap in price management, and is revealed in Dominic Bergers’ research regarding status quo bias and its individual differences from a price management perspective. He identified status quo bias as a possible influencer of 22 rationality deficits identified and explained by Rullkötter (2009), and is further attributed to deficits within Simon and Fassnacht’s (2016) price management process phases. Status quo bias remained as an underlying possible cause of 16 of the 22 rationality deficits. Examples of these can be seen within the analysis phase and implementation phase of price management processes.
Bergers reveal that status quo bias within the former price management process phase potentially led to complete reliance on external information sources that existed traditionally. This bias, through a price management perspective, can be demonstrated when monitoring competitor’s pricing. In the latter phase, status quo bias potentially led to the final price being determined by decentralised staff, which is potentially perpetuated by existing system profitability within price management practices.
Mutual Fund Market
An empirical study conducted by Alexandre Kempf and Stefan Ruenzi examined the presence of status quo bias within the US equity mutual fund market, and the extent in which this depends on the number of alternatives given. Using real data obtained from the US mutual fund market, this study reveals status quo bias influences fund investors, in which a stronger correlation for positive dependence of status quo bias was found when the number of alternatives was larger, and therefore confirms Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) experimental results.
Economic Research
Status quo bias has a significant impact on economics research and policy creation. Anchoring and adjustment theory in economics is where people’s decision-making and outcome are affected by their initial reference point. The reference point for a consumer is usually the status quo. Status quo bias results in the default option to be better understood by consumers compared to alternatives options. This results in the status quo option providing less uncertainty and higher expected utility for risk-averse decision makers. Status quo bias is compounded by loss aversion theory where consumers see disadvantages as larger than advantages when making decision away from the reference point. Economics can also describe the effect of loss aversion graphically with a consumer’s utility function for losses having a negative and 2 times steeper curve than the utility function for gains. Therefore, they perceive the negative effect of a loss as more significant and will stay with status quo. Consumers choosing the status quo goes against rational consumer choice theory as they are not maximising their utility. Rational consumer choice theory underpins many economic decisions by defining a set of rules for consumer behaviour. Therefore, status quo bias has substantial implications in economic theory.
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In psychology and sociology, social inertia or cultural inertia is the resistance to change or the permanence of stable relationships possibly outdated in societies or social groups. Social inertia is the opposite of social change.
The idea of social inertia can be traced back to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. According to Bourdieu, each person occupies a position in a social space, which consists of his or her social class as well as social relationships and social networks. Through the individual’s engagement in the social space, he or she develops a set of behaviours, lifestyle and habits (which Bourdieu referred to as habitus) which often serve to maintain the status quo. Thus, people are encouraged to “accept the social world as it is, to take it for granted, rather than to rebel against it, to counterpose to it different, even antagonistic, possibles.” This can explain the continuity of the social order through time.
Sociologists have examined how economic and cultural heritage is transmitted across generations, which can lead to strong social inertia even during times of social progress. In particular, Bourdieu found in his studies of Algeria that even during times of rapid economic change, cultural and symbolic factors limited the flexibility of the society to quickly adapt to change.
Therefore, social inertia has been used to explain how dominant social classes maintain their status and privilege over time. Currently, this is a hotly debated topic in the US. While President Barack Obama reaffirmed America’s commitment to equal opportunity in his second inaugural address, Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz believes it is a myth that modern society offers equal opportunity and high social mobility through mechanisms such as formal education.
Examples
In the Culture of Honour
An example of social inertia in the culture of the US is the culture of honour which exists in parts of the South and West. In the culture of honour, violence is seen as an acceptable way of responding to insults or threats to a person’s self, family, property, or reputation. Some psychologists and historians believe that the culture of honour arose as a way of enforcing order on the frontier, when the South and West were first being settled and there was inadequate law enforcement and little social order. According to this hypothesis, herding (which is a solitary activity) should be more closely tied to the culture of honour than farming (which is a cooperative activity). However, some scholars have not found support for this. When researchers examined the relationship between agricultural practices in the rural South and the white male homicide rates in those areas, they did not find that homicide rates were higher in counties that were hilly and arid and therefore more suitable for herding vs. farming. They concluded that homicide rates did not support the herding vs. farming hypothesis for the culture of honour. Therefore, religion and poverty have been offered as alternative explanations for the origins of the culture of honour.
Even though the economic and social circumstances of the South and West have since changed, the culture of honour persists due to social inertia. It has become a social norm in southern and western culture, and these norms persist even when economies change.
In Creative Labour
In a 2013 journal article in the Journal of Sociology, sociologist Scott Brook applied the theory of social inertia to the field of creative labour. Specifically, Brook was concerned with why so many students would continue to seek degrees in creative fields (such as the arts and creative writing), even when the oversupply of labour meant that many students were unable to find employment in those fields after graduation. Even if they were able to find employment, they earned less than their peers with non-creative degrees. Scott used Bourdieu’s notion of social inertia to suggest that students who were drawn to the non-commercial nature of creative fields came from families with low socioeconomic status and whose parents had not been able to develop a career themselves. Students followed in their parents’ footsteps by choosing educational pursuits which were less likely to lead to high-earning careers, thus leading to social inertia in income across generations.
In Collaborations
Social inertia has been used as a way of studying collaborations and interactions between people. Specifically, social inertia has been defined as a measurement of how likely people are to continue collaborating with previous partners or members of the same team. An analysis of large-scale, complex networks such as the IMDb showed that two types of “extreme” collaboration behaviours appeared more than average – some people collaborate with the same partners over and over again, while others change partners frequently.
In Attitudes and Attitude Change
Psychological studies on attitudes and attitude change have found that participants are reluctant to reduce their confidence in an estimate that they have made even after they receive new information that goes against their original estimate. Researchers have hypothesized that this “inertia effect” is due to participants’ psychological commitment to their initial judgements.
In Romantic Relationships
Some psychological studies have shown that premarital cohabitation (living together before marriage) is associated with an increased risk of divorce, and this has been termed the cohabitation effect. Researchers believe that one reason for this effect is that living together increases the inertia of the relationship – i.e. the likelihood that a couple will continue to stay together vs. break up. Inertia in cohabiting couples occurs because living together imposes constraints on a relationship (a shared lease, etc.) that make relationships harder to end. Therefore, a cohabiting couple may stay together even if they are not compatible. Because living together represents an ambiguous form of commitment compared with marriage, cohabiting may not increase the levels of dedication in either partner. Partners may “slide” into marriage through cohabitation instead of making a firm decision to commit to each other, leading to problems in the marriage in the future.
However, the research on whether higher divorce rates are due to the cohabitation effect are mixed. For example, researchers have found that the relationship between cohabitation and divorce also depends on factors such as when the couple was married (for example, marriages which take place after 1996 do not show the cohabitation effect), their race/ethnicity, and their marriage plans at the time of cohabitation. Other studies have found that what has been called the cohabitation effect is entirely attributable to other factors.
In Animal Behaviour
The term social inertia was used by A.M. Guhl in 1968 to describe dominance hierarchies in animal groups. Studies of animal behaviour have found that groups of animals can form social orders or social hierarchies that are relatively fixed and stable. For example, chickens establish a social order within the group based on pecking behaviours. Even when some of the chickens were treated with an androgen to increase their aggressiveness, the established social order suppressed their exhibition of aggressive behaviours so that social order was maintained.
This same effect has been found in other birds as well as in invertebrates such as social wasps and the burying beetle N. orbicollis. Researchers theorise that this lack of change in social hierarchies even under the influence of aggression hormones is due to the effects of familiarity – animals learn their place in the social hierarchy of a group within the first few encounters with other group members. This will cause low-ranking animals treated with aggression hormones to behave aggressively towards animals from other groups but not towards dominant members of their own group.
Related Concepts
Cultural Inertia
The psychologist Michael Zarate has coined the term “cultural inertia” to refer to reactions to social change, such as those caused by immigration. Cultural inertia is defined as the desire to avoid cultural change, and also the desire for change to continue once it is already occurring. Within the cultural inertia framework, the dominant group is stable and resists cultural change, while subordinate groups desire cultural changes which incorporate their cultural traditions so that they do not have to assimilate into the dominant culture. In the context of the US and immigration, the framework suggests that white majority members resist the cultural change that occurs from immigration, while immigrant groups try to enact change in US culture.
Cultural inertia is related to social psychological theories such as the instrumental model of group conflict, acculturative fit, and system justification theory. It is a contributor to intergroup prejudice due to groups’ fear of cultural change.
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Knowledge inertia (KI) is a concept in knowledge management. The term initially proposed by Shu-hsien Liao comprises a two dimensional model which incorporates experience inertia and learning inertia. Later, another dimension—the dimension of thinking inertia—has been added based on the theoretical exploration of the existing concepts of experience inertia and learning inertia.
One of the central problems in knowledge management related to organisational learning is to deal with “inertia”. Besides, individuals may also exhibit a natural tendency of inertia when facing problems during utilisation of knowledge. Inertia in technical jargon means inactivity or torpor. Inertia in organisational learning context may be referred to as a slowdown in organisational learning-related activities. In fact, there are many other kinds of organisational inertia: e.g., innovation inertia, workforce inertia, productivity inertia, decision inertia, emotional inertia besides others that have different meanings in their own individual contexts. Some organisation theorists have adopted the definition proposed by Liao (2002) to extend its further use in organisational learning studies.
Knowledge inertia (KI) may be defined as a problem solving strategy using old, redundant, stagnant knowledge and past experience without recourse to new knowledge and experience. Inertia is a concept in physics that is used to explain the state of an object either remaining in stationary or uniform motion. Organisational theorists adopted this concept of inertia and applied it to different contexts which resulted in the emergence of diverse concepts – such as, for example, organisational inertia, consumer inertia, outsourcing inertia, and cognitive inertia. Some organisational theorists have adopted the definition proposed by Liao (2002) to extend its further use in organisational learning studies. Not every instances of knowledge inertia result in gloomy of negative outcome: one study suggested that knowledge inertia could positively affect a firm’s product innovation.
The Concept
Knowledge inertia stems from the use of routine problem solving procedures that involves the utilisation of redundant, stagnant knowledge and past experience without any recourse to new knowledge and thinking processes. Different methodologies exist for diverse types of knowledge that could be applied to manage knowledge efficiently. Since KI is a component of knowledge management, it is essential to consider the circulation of various knowledge types in avoiding inertia. The theory of KI supposedly studies the extent to which an organisation’s ability on problem solving is inhibited. Numerous factors could be attributed as enablers or inhibitors of the abilities on problem solving of an individual or an organisation. Knowledge inertia applicable in the context of problem solving, therefore, may require inputs from all these diverse knowledge types, or it may require learning, new thinking, and experience. Emergence of new ideas to supplement the existing knowledge and assimilation of the same could be of help in avoiding the use of stagnant, outdated information while attempting to solve problems.
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Psychological inertia is the tendency to maintain the status quo (or default option) unless compelled by a psychological motive to intervene or reject this.
Psychological inertia is similar to the status quo bias but there is an important distinction in that psychological inertia involves inhibiting any action, whereas the status-quo bias involves avoiding any change which would be perceived as a loss.
Research into psychological inertia is limited, particularly into its causes, but it has been seen to affect decision-making by causing individuals to automatically choose or prefer the default option, even if there is a more beneficial option available to them, unless motivated to reject this option. For example, psychological inertia may cause individuals to continue with their investments later than they should, despite information telling them otherwise, causing them to suffer greater losses than they would have if they had disinvested earlier.
Psychological inertia has also seen to be relevant in areas of health, crime and within the workplace.
David Gal and Derek Rucker both suggest that psychological inertia could be a more suitable explanation for phenomena such as the status-quo bias and the endowment effect than loss aversion.
Status Quo Bias
The psychological inertia account asserts that the reason individuals choose to remain at the status quo is due to a lack of psychological motive to change this behaviour rather than through the weighing up of losses and gains in this decision. Both explanations were tested by David Gal in a study where subjects were asked to imagine that they owned a quarter minted in either Denver or Philadelphia. They were then given the choice of exchanging their coin with one minted in the other city, assuming insignificant time and effort involved in this process. It was found that 85% of participants chose to retain their original coin which can be explained by the inertia account of remaining at the status quo. However, the loss aversion account is unable to explain this decision as it does not provide insight into a propensity towards the status-quo when the option values are equivalent.
Endowment Effect
The endowment effect, i.e. greater value being placed on objects that are owned than those that are not, has been shown to be caused by loss aversion. This was demonstrated in Daniel Kahneman’s study in 1990 where participants who were given a mug demanded, on average, around seven dollars to part with it. Whereas, individuals who were not given a mug were only willing to spend, on average, around three dollars on the same mug. This therefore demonstrated that losses exert a greater impact than gains. However, it could also be seen as evidence for psychological inertia as the participants were provided with the same objects and therefore, as they were indifferent to them, they chose to maintain the status quo as there was no incentive to trade.
Inability to Break with Tradition
The 1998 article “Psychological Inertia” by James Kowalick refers to a company where the president was displeased that company management had little knowledge of what was going on in the manufacturing department. The management team was not approachable and looked down on employees that were not managers. “Remaining behind the sacred doors of one’s managerial office had become quite a tradition.” To address this issue, the president asked each manager to present a manufacturing procedure in detail at the staff meeting while the other managers asked penetrating questions. As a result, in short time, managers were on the production floor learning the procedures. This form of PI represents “cultural and traditional programming”.
Examples and Applications
Health
Avolition has been understood as a core symptom in schizophrenia, however, the drives of it are unclear. One possible drive that may underlie avolition is psychological inertia. It has been argued that as individuals with schizophrenia may be less able to convert their preferences into actions, they may display an increased tendency to maintain a current state, even if they attribute greater value to a different option available. Therefore, this causes these individuals to display greater levels of psychological inertia, and since this process inhibits their action, its presence could drive avolition. James Gold found that motivational impairments of schizophrenia may be associated with abnormalities in estimating the “cost” of effortful behaviour leading to increased psychological inertia which, in turn, could lead to increased avolition in these individuals. However, research into links between psychological inertia and schizophrenia is limited as is their relationship to avolition. For example, research is needed to explore whether the differences in levels of psychological inertia in individuals with schizophrenia only occur when there is a need to engage high levels of inertia or when the individual displays a high level of avolition. Research has shown, however, that the differences in levels of psychological inertia among individuals with schizophrenia is not only due to avolition but could be caused by attention deficits or action-readiness deficits.
Crime
Psychological inertia is believed to be one explanation factor in crime continuity, that is the persistence of criminal behaviour. Glenn Walter’s psychological inertia theorem states that crime continuity is partly caused by cognitive factors that account for the continuity in behaviour between past and future criminality and derives from his broader ‘lifestyle theory’ model, which explains the overall development of a criminal lifestyle. Walter’s theorem is based upon Newton’s law of inertia which states that a body will remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force, in which here the body in motion is crime. Within this theorem, Walter attributes six slow-changing variables that when combined link past criminality with future criminality. These six cognitive variables are:
Criminal thinking (antisocial attitudes and irrational thought patterns)
Positive outcome expectancies for crime (belief that crime will have specific positive outcomes)
Attribution biases (tendency to view the world as hostile and others as malicious)
Efficacy expectations (lack of confidence in one’s ability to avoid criminal opportunities in the future)
Goals (i.e. focus on short-term goals which becomes detrimental to long-term goals)
Values (pursuit of self-indulgent pleasure and immediate gratification)
The psychological inertia theorem argues that criminal involvement gives rise to these six cognitive variables which then encourage further offending behaviour.
Theories surrounding the expectation of behavioural continuity are a topic of debate in the criminal justice community. But the conventional wisdom that past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour has generally led to:
“an expectation that offenders with histories of criminal violence in the community are at increased risk for disruptive conduct in prison [and] has been operationalized as a routine component in prison risk classifications”.
Workplace
Psychological inertia has been found to be prevalent in change management within the workplace due to the fact it causes individuals to feel anxiety and fear as a result of any type of change away from the status-quo which may bring new responsibilities and roles. There are a variety of different interventions that have been suggested to overcome this psychological inertia which include providing fuller information including explaining the benefits that such a change will bring, causing people to feel less anxious and more motivated to carry out this change.
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