The Status Quo Bias

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Tuesday, March 15. 2022

Status Quo Bias, also known as the Omission-Commission Fallacy:

The status quo bias is one type of cognitive bias that involves people preferring that things stay as they are or that the current state of affairs remains the same. This bias can have an effect on human behavior, but it is also a topic of interest in other fields, including sociology, politics, and economics.

By being aware of how the status quo bias influences your decisions and behaviors, you can look for ways to reduce the bias in the choices you make each and every day.

It is an anti-change bias, or an anti-risk bias. Surely it has some costs (and I do not mean financial). I know people who love change. It must be a bell curve of personality tendencies.

My bias is to resist change. It is a personality trait (perhaps not an ideal one), but maybe partly because I tend to be sanguine about my own life. I use the Serenity Prayer for additional support when needed.

On the global scale? World "stability" will never happen. Climates? Change will always occur over time. Re the latter, some change might be good but almost nobody discusses that.

Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:47 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

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There is the HEXACO or Big Five Personality factor "Openness to Experience" that has been studied, and sounds close to what your hypothesised Bell-Curve might be measuring.

I can see both change-desiring and change-resistance in my personality, as I suspect most of us can, applying them in different contexts. I tend more to resistance. While it is true that the conservative, risk-averse personality misses opportunity and underestimates opportunity cost, I find that the change-desiring folks are even more likely to underestimate what it cost to get to the status quo. It is difficult and expensive to build things, easy to knock them down.

#1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2022-03-15 16:10 (Reply)

Assistant Village Idiot: While it is true that the conservative, risk-averse personality misses opportunity and underestimates opportunity cost, I find that the change-desiring folks are even more likely to underestimate what it cost to get to the status quo. It is difficult and expensive to build things, easy to knock them down.

You have provided an excellent statement of the tension between conservatism and reform, and why even a broad-minded conservative might prefer incremental change to revolution.

QUOTE:

G. K. Chesterton: There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

#1.1 Zachriel on 2022-03-15 16:30 (Reply)

All 'change' is not equal. You cannot talk about change as though it was. Some ideas for change are stupid and the people advocating them are stupid as well. Some change is logical, reasonable and desirable. And there is much that falls somewhere in between. Sometimes the argument against change is correct and sometimes not so much. Some change is monumental and NEEDS to be seriously debated. Some change is either not a big deal or can be ignored or you simply don't participate in it, i.e. isn't forced or enforced.

AN example of change that I don't want is eliminating physical money.

#2 Geroge on 2022-03-15 16:47 (Reply)

Geroge: AN example of change that I don't want is eliminating physical money.

Funny thing about physical money. At first, wealth was measured in heads of cattle. Then, somebody came up with the idea of using gold or silver as a medium of exchange. Later on, somebody else came up with the idea of coining. More recently, they started issuing pieces of paper. For someone used to paper money, it looks very real! Then they decided give you a piece of plastic, and you could go into stores, and they would give you what you want. Nowadays, most people have their money kept as electronic data. You can print a hard copy if you like, but why bother. You can push a few buttons, and stuff arrives at your door.

#2.1 Zachriel on 2022-03-15 17:00 (Reply)

All of that is true... in good times.

I am not talking about wealth or measuring wealth I am talking about the ability of someone, gee I don't know... someone like Trudeau being able to confiscate and shut off my access to the money I need just to survive. I am talking about the tracking of everything you do, everywhere you go and everything you buy because of the innate ability to track credit or cloud money. And although I have not been a conspiracy theorists or a believer in conspiracy theories in the past recent events, basically where all the conspiracy theories have proven to be true, now make me a believer.

I would never have guessed that our very own FBI and DOJ would misuse the FISA court for example. And NOT to catch some nefarious criminal that they simply would never get otherwise. NO! to mount an insurrection against first a presidential candidate and then a sitting president.

I would never have guessed that the Mounties (it is an institution with a long proud history for crying out loud) would use violence against unarmed peaceful citizens and deny them their basic civil rights and get away with it.

I would never have guessed that Canada, filled with gentle caring honest people, would allow/encourage their government to ride down their citizens, confiscate their property and lock them out of their bank for nothing more than disagreeing with the PM!!!

No! Everything has changed. All power WILL be abused. Our government, it's bureaucracy, cannot be trusted. It pains me to realize that but it is true. All laws will be abused, all citizens who disagree will be punished through "lawfare". I simply no longer believe in Santa Claus or our government's honesty.

#2.1.1 George on 2022-03-15 18:48 (Reply)

George: someone like Trudeau being able to confiscate and shut off my access to the money I need just to survive

People looked at the invention of paper money rather suspiciously too. The issuer could just renege. But to modern eyes, it looks like something of real value. There's nothing preventing you from using the old barter system. It's just that everyone else uses modern banking. There are apparently advantages to modern banking.

George: I would never have guessed that Canada, filled with gentle caring honest people, would allow/encourage their government to ride down their citizens, confiscate their property and lock them out of their bank for nothing more than disagreeing with the PM!!!

Well, no. They violated a court order to disperse.

George: All power WILL be abused.

Sure, which is why modern democracies have systems of accountability. In this case, the government didn't act alone, but in accordance with emergency laws passed by parliament, where a motion to confirm the declaration of emergency tabled within seven days. The issue was then adjudicated by the courts, which ordered the protesters to disperse. How did you think it worked?

#2.1.1.1 Zachriel on 2022-03-16 09:56 (Reply)

You fundamentally misunderstand Chesterton. No surprise there.

A revolution may produce a good change, as in the bursting of a seed into a plant or a chrysalis into a butterfly.

Incremental changes may produce a bad result, as in the slow decay of iron into rust and wood into rot.

Chesterton's quote is not about delaying tactics or becoming comfortable with somebody's 'arc of history' but the analysis of what result a change is producing, and being able to explain it, and not simply exclaiming that we must have arrived in the best of all possible worlds.

#2.1.2 Christopher B on 2022-03-16 06:35 (Reply)

Chrisopher B: A revolution may produce a good change, as in the bursting of a seed into a plant or a chrysalis into a butterfly. Incremental changes may produce a bad result, as in the slow decay of iron into rust and wood into rot.

Sure, it can. Chesterton didn't argue that the fence shouldn't be torn down, just that the reformers should be aware of what it may cost to do so.

While a conservative would argue towards incremental change and an adherence to institutions and traditions with long pedigree, there are certainly times when preserving those institutions in one aspect may mean a more radical change elsewhere. Here is a statement of that principle:

QUOTE:

U.S. Declaration of Independence: Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

#2.1.2.1 Zachriel on 2022-03-16 10:01 (Reply)

Christopher B: A revolution may produce a good change, as in the bursting of a seed into a plant or a chrysalis into a butterfly.

On a related line of thought, complex systems can be more flexible and stable than rigid systems, because of the interweaving and distribution of network connections. Most changes will be small and evolutionary. A few changes will be large, and the impact will ripple through the network of connections seeking a new stable state. Then there will be the rare revolution, which may have unknowable consequences.

Modern democracies are such a complex system, with power distributed throughout: legislative, judicial, executive; federal, state, local; elections and representation; public and private property; public infrastructure and entrepreneurship; families, churches, neighborhoods; clubs, civic organizations, lobbying groups; robust markets and a social safety net; individual and collective liberties; etc.

#2.1.2.2 Zachriel on 2022-03-16 11:31 (Reply)

It's as if he knew you posted this, Barrister.

#3 Christopher B on 2022-03-16 06:43 (Reply)

"I use the Serenity Prayer for additional support when needed."
Me Too.
It's surprising how flexible difference telling Wisdom can be, when needed.

#4 bilejones on 2022-03-20 19:32 (Reply)

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Tuesday, March 15. 2022

The Status Quo Bias