Psychological inertia is the tendency to maintain the status quo (or default option) unless compelled by a psychological motive to intervene or reject this. [1]
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. [2]
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. [3]
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. [1]
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. [3]
The 1998 article "Psychological Inertia" by James Kowalick [4] 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". [4]
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. [5]
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:
The psychological inertia theorem argues that criminal involvement gives rise to these six cognitive variables which then encourage further offending behaviour. [6]
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". [7]
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. [8]
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, and irrationality.
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by classical economic theory.
Prospect theory is a theory of behavioral economics, judgment and decision making that was developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979. The theory was cited in the decision to award Kahneman the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, is the common tendency for people to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they were.
Loss aversion is a psychological and economic concept which refers to how outcomes are interpreted as gains and losses where losses are subject to more sensitivity in people's responses compared to equivalent gains acquired. Kahneman and Tversky (1992) have suggested that losses can be twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. When defined in terms of the utility function shape as in the cumulative prospect theory (CPT), losses have a steeper utility than gains, thus being more "painful" than the satisfaction from a comparable gain as shown in Figure 1. Loss aversion was first proposed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman as an important framework for prospect theory – an analysis of decision under risk.
Status quo bias is an emotional bias; a preference for the maintenance of one's current or previous state of affairs, or a preference to not undertake any action to change this current or previous state. The current baseline 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.
In psychology and behavioral economics, the endowment effect is the finding that people are more likely to retain an object they own than acquire that same object when they do not own it. The endowment theory can be defined as "an application of prospect theory positing that loss aversion associated with ownership explains observed exchange asymmetries."
Omission bias is the phenomenon in which people prefer omission (inaction) over commission (action) and people 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.
System justification theory is a theory within social psychology that system-justifying beliefs serve a psychologically palliative function. It proposes that people have several underlying needs, which vary from individual to individual, that can be satisfied by the defense and justification of the status quo, even when the system may be disadvantageous to certain people. People have epistemic, existential, and relational needs that are met by and manifest as ideological support for the prevailing structure of social, economic, and political norms. Need for order and stability, and thus resistance to change or alternatives, for example, can be a motivator for individuals to see the status quo as good, legitimate, and even desirable.
The negativity bias, also known as the negativity effect, is a cognitive bias that, even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one's psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things. In other words, something very positive will generally have less of an impact on a person's behavior and cognition than something equally emotional but negative. The negativity bias has been investigated within many different domains, including the formation of impressions and general evaluations; attention, learning, and memory; and decision-making and risk considerations.
The ostrich effect, also known as the ostrich problem, was originally coined by Galai & Sade (2003). The name comes from the common legend that ostriches bury their heads in the sand to avoid danger. This effect is a cognitive bias where people tend to “bury their head in the sand” and avoid potentially negative but useful information, such as feedback on progress, to avoid psychological discomfort.
Choice architecture is the design of different ways in which choices can be presented to decision makers, and the impact of that presentation on decision-making. For example, each of the following:
The framing effect is a cognitive bias in which people decide between options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations. Individuals have a tendency to make risk-avoidant choices when options are positively framed, while selecting more loss-avoidant options when presented with a negative frame. In studies of the bias, options are presented in terms of the probability of either losses or gains. While differently expressed, the options described are in effect identical. Gain and loss are defined in the scenario as descriptions of outcomes, for example, lives lost or saved, patients treated or not treated, monetary gains or losses.
In psychology and neuroscience, executive dysfunction, or executive function deficit, is a disruption to the efficacy of the executive functions, which is a group of cognitive processes that regulate, control, and manage other cognitive processes. Executive dysfunction can refer to both neurocognitive deficits and behavioural symptoms. It is implicated in numerous psychopathologies and mental disorders, as well as short-term and long-term changes in non-clinical executive control. Executive dysfunction is the mechanism underlying ADHD Paralysis, and in a broader context, it can encompass other cognitive difficulties like planning, organizing, initiating tasks and regulating emotions. It is a core characteristic of ADHD and can elucidate numerous other recognized symptoms.
Cognitive inertia is the tendency for a particular orientation in how an individual thinks about an issue, belief, or strategy to resist change. Clinical and neuroscientific literature often defines it as a lack of motivation to generate distinct cognitive processes needed to attend to a problem or issue. The physics term inertia emphasizes the rigidity and resistance to change in the method of cognitive processing that has been used for a significant amount of time. Commonly confused with belief perseverance, cognitive inertia is the perseverance of how one interprets information, not the perseverance of the belief itself.
In psychology, economics and philosophy, preference is a technical term usually used in relation to choosing between alternatives. For example, someone prefers A over B if they would rather choose A than B. Preferences are central to decision theory because of this relation to behavior. Some methods such as Ordinal Priority Approach use preference relation for decision-making. As connative states, they are closely related to desires. The difference between the two is that desires are directed at one object while preferences concern a comparison between two alternatives, of which one is preferred to the other.
Risk aversion is a preference for a sure outcome over a gamble with higher or equal expected value. Conversely, rejection of a sure thing in favor of a gamble of lower or equal expected value is known as risk-seeking behavior.
David Gal is Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is best known for his critiques of behavioral economics, and in particular his critique of the behavioral economics concept of loss aversion.
