Status Quo Bias Quotes

The tendency to continue doing something simply because we have always done it is sometimes called the “status quo bias.

One of the causes of status quo bias is a lack of attention. Many people adopt what we will call the “yeah, whatever” heuristic.

I pity those reviewers above, and people like them, who ridicule authors like R.A. Boulay and other proponents of similar Ancient Astronaut theories, simply for putting forth so many interesting questions (because that's really what he often throughout openly admits is all he does does) in light of fascinating and thought-provoking references which are all from copious sources. Some people will perhaps only read the cover and introduction and dismiss it as soon as any little bit of information flies in the face of their beliefs or normalcy biases. Some of those people, I'm sure, are some of the ones who reviewed this book so negatively without any constructive criticism or plausible rebuttal. It's sad to see how programmed and indoctrinated the vast majority of humanity has become to the ills of dogma, indoctrination, unverified status quos and basic ignorance; not to mention the laziness and conformity that results in such acquiescence and lack of critical thinking or lack of information gathering to confirm or debunk something. Too many people just take what's spoon fed to them all their lives and settle for it unquestioningly. For those people I like to offer a great Einstein quote and one of my personal favorites and that is: "Condemnation without investigation is the highest form of ignorance" I found this book to be a very interesting gathering of information and collection of obscure and/or remote antiquated information, i.e. biblical, sacred, mythological and otherwise, that we were not exactly taught to us in bible school, or any other public school for that matter. And I am of the school of thought that has been so for intended purposes. The author clearly cites all his fascinating sources and cross-references them rather plausibly. He organizes the information in a sequential manner that piques ones interest even as he jumps from one set of information to the next. The information, although eclectic as it spans from different cultures and time periods, interestingly ties together in several respects and it is this synchronicity that makes the information all the more remarkable. For those of you who continue to seek truth and enlightenment because you understand that an open mind makes for and lifelong pursuit of such things I leave you with these Socrates quotes: "True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

This example highlights two aspects of choice that the standard model of indifference curves does not predict. First, tastes are not fixed; they vary with the reference point. Second, the disadvantages of a change loom larger than its advantages, inducing a bias that favors the status quo.

We live in a world that suffers from “status quo bias”. This means that change is resisted just because it’s change. People want to be safe and secure in familiar surroundings, with familiar people and familiar routines. Average people simply don’t like change. They don’t want it. Boredom is supposed to spur people on to change things, to change their life. However, nowadays, we have endless diversion tactics, endless ways of staving off boredom with the TV, movies, music, video games, online gambling and porn, and so on. All this means that it’s harder than ever to bring about real change.

The endowment effect is a cognitive bias where we value something we own more than we would if we didn’t own it. We can be endowed to objects but also to our own ideas and beliefs. Endowment is an obstacle to quitting because when we irrationally value things we own, we miscalculate their expected value. We might think the company we started or the project we devised or the belief we have is worth more than it actually is. We prefer to stick with the status quo. We are more tolerant of bad outcomes that come from sticking with what we are already doing than bad outcomes that come from switching to something new. This phenomenon is part of omission-commission bias. When you say, “I’m just not ready to decide yet,” what you are really saying is, “For now, I am choosing the status quo.” Even in highly data-rich environments like professional sports, sunk cost, endowment, and status quo bias distort decision-making.

The master propagandist, like the advertising expert, avoids obvious emotional appeals and strives for a tone that is consistent with the prosaic quality of modern life—a dry, bland matter-of-factness. Nor does the propagandist circulate "intentionally biased" information. He knows that partial truths serve as more effective instruments of deception than lies. Thus he tries to impress the public with statistics of economic growth that neglect to give the base year from which growth is calculated, with accurate but meaningless facts about the standard of living—with raw and uninterpreted data, in other words, from which the audience is invited to draw the inescapable conclusion that things are getting better and the present régime therefore deserves the people's confidence, or on the other hand that things are getting worse so rapidly that the present régime should be given emergency powers to deal with the developing crisis.

Animals, including people, fight harder to prevent losses than to achieve gains. In the world of territorial animals, this principle explains the success of defenders. A biologist observed that “when a territory holder is challenged by a rival, the owner almost always wins the contest—usually within a matter of seconds.” In human affairs, the same simple rule explains much of what happens when institutions attempt to reform themselves, in “reorganizations” and “restructuring” of companies, and in efforts to rationalize a bureaucracy, simplify the tax code, or reduce medical costs. As initially conceived, plans for reform almost always produce many winners and some losers while achieving an overall improvement. If the affected parties have any political influence, however, potential losers will be more active and determined than potential winners; the outcome will be biased in their favor and inevitably more expensive and less effective than initially planned. Reforms commonly include grandfather clauses that protect current stake-holders—for example, when the existing workforce is reduced by attrition rather than by dismissals, or when cuts in salaries and benefits apply only to future workers. Loss aversion is a powerful conservative force that favors minimal changes from the status quo in the lives of both institutions and individuals.

In a classic study of how names impact people’s experience on the job market, researchers show that, all other things being equal, job seekers with White-sounding first names received 50 percent more callbacks from employers than job seekers with Black-sounding names.5 They calculated that the racial gap was equivalent to eight years of relevant work experience, which White applicants did not actually have; and the gap persisted across occupations, industry, employer size – even when employers included the “equal opportunity” clause in their ads.6 With emerging technologies we might assume that racial bias will be more scientifically rooted out. Yet, rather than challenging or overcoming the cycles of inequity, technical fixes too often reinforce and even deepen the status quo. For example, a study by a team of computer scientists at Princeton examined whether a popular algorithm, trained on human writing online, would exhibit the same biased tendencies that psychologists have documented among humans. They found that the algorithm associated White-sounding names with “pleasant” words and Black-sounding names with “unpleasant” ones.7 Such findings demonstrate what I call “the New Jim Code”: the employment of new technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era.

Woke is not merely a state of awareness; it is a force that dismantles the walls of ignorance and complacency. It is the unwavering commitment to truth, justice, and equality, igniting a flame within the hearts of those who seek a better world. To be woke is to rise above the shadows of indifference and confront the uncomfortable realities that permeate our society. It is to acknowledge the deep-rooted biases, systemic injustices, and the pervasive discrimination that persistently plague our communities. Woke is the courage to challenge the status quo, to question the narratives that uphold oppression, and to demand accountability from those who hold power. It is the unwavering belief that every voice matters, regardless of race, gender, or social standing. Woke is the realization that progress requires action, not just words. It is the recognition that the fight for justice extends beyond hashtags and viral trends. It is a constant pursuit of education, empathy, and empathy and the willingness to stand up for what is right, even in the face of adversity. Woke is a movement that refuses to be silenced. It is the collective power of individuals coming together to amplify marginalized voices, to challenge the systems that perpetuate inequality, and to build a future where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. Being woke is not an endpoint; it is a lifelong journey. It is the commitment to unlearn and relearn, to listen and understand, and to continuously evolve in the pursuit of a more inclusive and equitable world. So, let us embrace our woke-ness, not as a trend or a buzzword, but as a guiding principle in our lives. Let us use our awareness to foster meaningful change, to uplift the marginalized, and to build bridges where there were once divides. For in our collective awakening lies the power to reshape the world, to create a future where justice, compassion, and equality prevail. Let us be woke, let us be bold, and let us be the catalysts of a brighter tomorrow.

Entire industries and some of our very largest professions depend on the persistence of our current system. Other social institutions—like giant publishers and test-prep companies—are synched to its workings. A certain teaching method implies certain goals and certain tests. The tests, in turn, have a serious impact on hiring practices and career advancement. Human nature being what it is, those who prosper under a given system tend to become supporters of that system. Thus the powerful tend to have a bias toward the status quo; our educational customs tend to perpetuate themselves, and because they interconnect with so many other aspects of our culture, they are extraordinarily difficult to change.

Here are descriptions of the five customer segments: Innovators are technology enthusiasts who pride themselves on being familiar with the latest and greatest innovation. They enjoy fiddling with new products and exploring their intricacies. They are more willing to use an unpolished product that may have some shortcomings or tradeoffs, and are fine with the fact that many of these products will ultimately fail. Early Adopters are visionaries who want to exploit new innovations to gain an advantage over the status quo. Unlike innovators, their interest in being first is not driven by an intrinsic love of technology but rather the opportunity to gain an edge. The Early Majority are pragmatists that have no interest in technology for its own sake. These individuals adopt new products only after a proven track record of delivering value. Because they are more risk averse than the first two segments, they feel more comfortable having strong references from trusted sources and tend to buy from the leading company in the product category. The Late Majority are risk-averse conservatives who are doubtful that innovations will deliver value and only adopt them when pressured to do so, for example, for financial reasons, due to competitive threats, or for fear of being reliant on an older, dying technology that will no longer be supported. Laggards are skeptics who are very wary of innovation. They hate change and have a bias for criticizing new technologies even after they have become mainstream.

Compounding this preference for the status quo is another bias called loss aversion, which says that we find losses more painful than gains are pleasant.

All of us --men and women alike-- have to understand and acknowledge how stereotypes and biases cloud our beliefs and perpetuate the status quo.

Studies consistently show that when we look back on our lives the most common regrets are not the risks we took, but the ones we didn’t. Of the many regrets people describe, regrets of inaction outnumber those of action by nearly two to one. Some of the most common include not pursuing more education, not being more assertive, and failing to seize the moment. When people reflect later in life, it is the things they did not do that generate the greatest despair.22 We are left with a paradox of inaction. On one hand we instinctively tend to stick with the default, or go with the herd. Researchers call it the status quo bias.23 We feel safe in our comfort zones, where we can avoid the sting of regret. And yet, at the same time, we regret most those actions and risks we did not take.

These results have some interesting implications for our views on creativity. Regardless of how open-minded people are or claim to be, they experience a subtle bias against creativity in uncertain situations. This isn't merely a preference for the familiar or a desire to maintain the status quo. It's an outright rejection of new, innovative ideas.

The traditions and rituals you encounter in your organization and in society often endure out of routine, rather than as the result of thoughtful deliberation. Psychologists and economists alike have a name for this phenomenon: the status quo bias.

Quitting is hard, too hard to do entirely on our own. We as individuals are riddled by the host of biases, like the sunk cost fallacy, endowment effect, status quo bias, and loss aversion, which lead to escalation of commitment. Our identities are entwined in the things that we’re doing. Our instinct is to want to protect that identity, making us stick to things even more.

The endowment and sunk cost effects live together in a way that amplifies escalation of commitment. Status quo bias adds to the mix of cognitive forces gaffing the scale.

But omission-commission bias causes us not to view these decisions as equivalent. That’s why we accept that explanation of “I’m not ready to make a decision yet” from others and why we accept it from ourselves. Of course, what that really means is “I’m not ready to veer from the status quo.

Status quo bias is a term coined by Richard and his coauthor William Samuelson in an article published in 1988, Richard’s most widely cited academic paper.[41] In its pages, the authors document a series of fascinating decision-making experiments that show that people disproportionally do nothing or maintain their current or previous decision, often when an easily assessable alternative would be superior.

brilliantly contributed to our understanding of status quo bias driven by fear of uncertainty. I have seen it impact poor decisions, including my own, on when to change jobs/careers and when to move on from bad marriages.

Gernot Wagner, a student and coauthor, notes the need to use judgment when assessing whether refraining from action reflects status quo bias. More generally, maxims describing human behavior apply in some contexts, but not others. “Status quo bias is a prime example. It is the friend of not acting, and you ignore it at your peril. But we also see ‘action bias.’ Often political leaders just want to be seen as doing something, anything – leading them to want to act, even if no action is the preferred choice.

Over the next few pages, we’ll explore five different types of thought experiments: the double standard test, the outsider test, the conformity test, the selective skeptic test, and the status quo bias test.

Yet from the standpoint of justice, this approach has serious limitations and pitfalls. Just as physicians take basic human anatomy as given when treating patients, policymakers working within the medical model treat the background structure of society as given and focus only on alleviating the burdens of the disadvantaged. When it comes to the ghetto poor, this generally means attempting to integrate them into an existing social system rather than viewing their unwillingness to fully cooperate as a sign that the system itself needs fundamental reform. In short, features of society that could and should be altered often get little scrutiny. This is the prob lem of status quo bias. In addition, the technocratic reasoning of the medical model marginalizes the po liti cal agency of those it aims to help. The ghetto poor are regarded as passive victims in need of assistance rather than as potential allies in what should be a collective effort to secure justice for all.

THE STATUS QUO BIAS TEST

Whites are / I am unconsciously invested in racism. Bias is implicit and unconscious; I don’t expect to be aware of mine without a lot of ongoing effort. Giving us white people feedback on our racism is risky for people of color, so we can consider the feedback a sign of trust. Feedback on white racism is difficult to give; how I am given the feedback is not as relevant as the feedback itself. Authentic antiracism is rarely comfortable. Discomfort is key to my growth and thus desirable. White comfort maintains the racial status quo, so discomfort is necessary and important. I must not confuse comfort with safety; as a white person, I am safe in discussions of racism. The antidote to guilt is action.

Thus the powerful tend to have a bias toward the status quo; our educational customs tend to perpetuate themselves, and because they interconnect with so many other aspects of our culture, they are extraordinarily difficult to change.

BE AWARE OF THE STATUS QUO BIAS

[quadrant with "addressing issues of character" on the x-axis and "addressing issues of gender bias" on the y-axis. "maintaining the status quo" on the bottom left; "miserable women and accusations of "reverse sexism" on the top left; "progress" on the top right; "gender blindness" on the bottom right

Remember that the status quo bias is guaranteed to do one thing—and that is to keep you safe. It will also ensure that your hopes and dreams are never fulfilled, and in the long run, you will probably regret not taking action. People shouldn’t be afraid of failure; they should be scared of regret. The feeling of looking back on your life and wondering “What if……” will torment you worse than the feeling of having tried and failed.

status quo bias: we would have to walk away from reality as we know it.

Racism is a multilayered system embedded in our culture. • All of us are socialized into the system of racism. • Racism cannot be avoided. • Whites have blind spots on racism, and I have blind spots on racism. • Racism is complex, and I don’t have to understand every nuance of the feedback to validate that feedback. • Whites are / I am unconsciously invested in racism. • Bias is implicit and unconscious; I don’t expect to be aware of mine without a lot of ongoing effort. • Giving us white people feedback on our racism is risky for people of color, so we can consider the feedback a sign of trust. • Feedback on white racism is difficult to give; how I am given the feedback is not as relevant as the feedback itself. • Authentic antiracism is rarely comfortable. Discomfort is key to my growth and thus desirable. • White comfort maintains the racial status quo, so discomfort is necessary and important. • I must not confuse comfort with safety; as a white person, I am safe in discussions of racism. • The antidote to guilt is action. • It takes courage to break with white solidarity; how can I support those who do? • I bring my group’s history with me; history matters. • Given my socialization, it is much more likely that I am the one who doesn’t understand the issue. • Nothing exempts me from the forces of racism. • My analysis must be intersectional (a recognition that my other social identities—class, gender, ability—inform how I was socialized into the racial system). • Racism hurts (even kills) people of color 24-7. Interrupting it is more important than my feelings, ego, or self-image.

We can use our past- and future-selves to pull us out of the moment and remind us when we’re watching the ticker, looking at our lives through that lens on extreme zoom. When we view these upticks and downticks under the magnification of that in-the-moment zoom lens, our emotional responses are, similarly, amplified. Like the flat tire in the rain, we are capable of treating things that will have little effect on our long-term happiness as having significant impact. Our decision-making becomes reactive, focused on off-loading negative emotions or sustaining positive emotions from the latest change in the status quo. We can see how this can result in self-serving bias: fielding outcomes to off-load the negative emotions we feel in the moment from a bad outcome by blaming them on luck and sustaining the positive emotions from good outcomes by taking credit for them. The decisions driven by the emotions of the moment can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, degrading the quality of the bets we make, increasing the chances of bad outcomes, and making things worse.

Anand Giridharadas detailed in his book Winners Take All, the reality of this service was often self-enrichment: “All around us, the winners in our highly inequitable status quo declare themselves partisans of change…. Because they are in charge of these attempts at social change, the attempts naturally reflect their biases.

Self-defeating consequences such as the ones we have been describing are psychologically intriguing, because they run counter to the assumption that people will always act in their own self-interest. John Jost, a psychologist at New York University, has suggested that, contrary to that expectation, people in fact are willing to sacrifice their self-interest for the sake of maintaining the existing social order. His experiments have shown that we do cognitive and emotional work to justify the hierarchies that make up the status quo, even when that means imposing costs on ourselves as well as on the groups to which we belong.

all these cognitive effects—loss aversion, sure-loss aversion, the sunk cost effect, endowment, status quo bias, and omission-commission bias—create a heady brew that makes it hard for us to quit on time.

Meritocracy is a false and not very salutary belief. As with any ideology, part of its draw is that it justifies the status quo, explaining why people belong where they happen to be in the social order. It is a well-established psychological principle that people prefer to believe that the world is just. However, in addition to legitimation, meritocracy also offers flattery. Where success is determined by merit, each win can be viewed as a reflection of one’s own virtue and worth. Meritocracy is the most self-congratulatory of distribution principles. Its ideological alchemy transmutes property into praise, material inequality into personal superiority. It licenses the rich and powerful to view themselves as productive geniuses. While this effect is most spectacular among the elite, nearly any accomplishment can be viewed through meritocratic eyes. Graduating from high school, artistic success or simply having money can all be seen as evidence of talent and effort. By the same token, worldly failures becomes signs of personal defects, providing a reason why those at the bottom of the social hierarchy deserve to remain there. ("A Belief in Meritocracy Is Not Only False: It’s Bad for You", Aeon)

the technical ignorance of elected politicians who are hardly credible in providing oversight or contemplating regulation; profound disagreements about what we value and how trade-offs should be made, whether in regard to data privacy, free speech, and content moderation or automation and the future of work; the slow, painstaking consideration of legislation that seems to generate competing bills—so that everyone has his or her name on one—without generating significant progress, especially in a highly polarized political environment; and the strong status quo bias of democratic institutions, which means that policy change is slow and sticky, making it difficult for regulators to respond flexibly and adaptably to new developments in technology.

I recommend trusting that the reason for an algorithmic decision is some kind of preexisting social bias manifesting in subtle (or obvious) ways. It feels unsatisfying to lack a reason, and that dissatisfaction can fuel a drive to achieve social justice. Tech is racist and sexist and ableist because the world is so. Computers just reflect the existing reality and suggest that things will stay the same—they predict the status quo. By adopting a more critical view of technology, and by being choosier about the tech we allow into our lives and our society, we can employ technology to stop reproducing the world as it is, and get us closer to a world that is truly more just.

status quo bias. This research demonstrates that people do not like to change unless there is a compelling reason to do so, such as an attractive incentive. Related research shows that people exhibit strong “loss aversion,” in that they are twice as likely to seek to avoid losses as they are to acquire gains.

As psychologists, we have learned that if we study hidden bias by the traditional method of looking for expressions of negativity or hostility directed against out-groups, if we measure it by counting the number of out-group churches or mosques that are burned down, we may fail to see the far more pervasive ways in which hidden biases maintain the status quo, depriving those on the bottom rungs of society of the resources available to the more privileged by birth and status.

Correlations made by big data are likely to reinforce negative bias. Because big data often relies on historical data or at least the status quo, it can easily reproduce discrimination against disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities. The propensity models used in many algorithms can bake in a bias against someone who lived in the zip code of a low-income neighborhood at any point in his or her life. If an algorithm used by human resources companies queries your social graph and positively weighs candidates with the most existing connections to a workforce, it makes it more difficult to break in in the first place. In effect, these algorithms can hide bias behind a curtain of code. Big data is, by its nature, soulless and uncreative. It nudges us this way and that for reasons we are not meant to understand. It strips us of our privacy and puts our mistakes, secrets, and scandals on public display. It reinforces stereotypes and historical bias. And it is largely unregulated because we need it for economic growth and because efforts to try to regulate it have tended not to work; the technologies are too far-reaching and are not built to recognize the national boundaries of our world

Correlations made by big data are likely to reinforce negative bias. Because big data often relies on historical data or at least the status quo, it can easily reproduce discrimination against disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities. The propensity models used in many algorithms can bake in a bias against someone who lived in the zip code of a low-income neighborhood at any point in his or her life. If an algorithm used by human resources companies queries your social graph and positively weighs candidates with the most existing connections to a workforce, it makes it more difficult to break in in the first place. In effect, these algorithms can hide bias behind a curtain of code. Big data is, by its nature, soulless and uncreative. It nudges us this way and that for reasons we are not meant to understand. It strips us of our privacy and puts our mistakes, secrets, and scandals on public display. It reinforces stereotypes and historical bias. And it is largely unregulated because we need it for economic growth and because efforts to try to regulate it have tended not to work; the technologies are too far-reaching and are not built to recognize the national boundaries of our world’s 196 sovereign nation-states. Yet would it be best to try to shut down these technologies entirely if we could? No. Big data simultaneously helps solve global challenges while creating an entirely new set of challenges. It’s our best chance at feeding 9 billion people, and it will help solve the problem of linguistic division that is so old its explanation dates back to the Old Testament and the Tower of Babel. Big data technologies will enable us to discover cancerous cells at 1 percent the size of what can be detected using today’s technologies, saving tens of millions of lives. The best approach to big data might be one put forward by the Obama campaign’s chief technology officer, Michael Slaby, who said, “There’s going to be a constant mix between your qualitative experience and your quantitative experience. And at times, they’re going to be at odds with each other, and at times they’re going to be in line. And I think it’s all about the blend. It’s kind of like you have a mixing board, and you have to turn one up sometimes, and turn down the other. And you never want to be just one or the other, because if it’s just one, then you lose some of the soul.” Slaby has made an impressive career out of developing big data tools, but even he recognizes that these tools work best when governed by human judgment. The choices we make about how we manage data will be as important as the decisions about managing land during the agricultural age and managing industry during the industrial age. We have a short window of time—just a few years, I think—before a set of norms set in that will be nearly impossible to reverse. Let’s hope humans accept the responsibility for making these decisions and don’t leave it to the machines.

10/10/10 provides distance by forcing us to consider future emotions as much as present ones. • A 10/10/10 analysis tipped Annie toward saying “I love you” first to Karl. 4. Our decisions are often altered by two subtle short-term emotions: (1) mere exposure: we like what’s familiar to us; and (2) loss aversion: losses are more painful than gains are pleasant.     •  How many of our organizational truths are ideas that we like merely because they’ve been repeated a lot?     •  Students given a mug won’t sell it for less than $7.12, even though five minutes earlier they wouldn’t have paid more than $2.87! 5. Loss aversion + mere exposure = status-quo bias. • PayPal: Ditching the PalmPilot product was a no-brainer—but it didn’t feel that way. 6. We can attain distance by looking at our situation from an observer’s perspective. • Andy Grove asked, “What would our successors do?”     •  Adding distance highlights what is most important; it allows us to see the forest, not the trees. 7. Perhaps the most powerful question for resolving personal decisions is “What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?

First, I said, we in law enforcement need to acknowledge the truth that we have long been the enforcers of a status quo in America that abused black people; we need to acknowledge our history because the people we serve and protect cannot forget it. Second, we all need to acknowledge that we carry implicit biases inside us, and if we aren’t careful, they can lead to assumptions and injustice. Third, something can happen to people in law enforcement who must respond to incidents resulting in the arrest of so many young men of color; it can warp perspectives and lead to cynicism. Finally, I said, we all must acknowledge that the police are not the root cause of the most challenging problems in our country’s worst neighborhoods, but that the actual causes and solutions are so hard that it is easier to talk only about the police. I then ordered all fifty-six FBI offices around the country to convene meetings between law enforcement and communities to talk about what is true and how to build the trust needed to bend those lines back toward each other. It is hard to hate up close, and the FBI could bring people up close.

People are strongly shaped and constrained by their own personal biases, experiences, and everyday environments. No matter how open-minded people may think they are, studies show that most people exhibit a strong “existence bias”—the natural tendency for humans to believe that something is morally good simply because it exists. They cannot help but assume that the way things are at the moment must be innately correct, which results in overvaluing existing precedents and status quos, and making judgments based on mere existence rather than reason or principle.

In order to discover truth it is necessary to coldly dissect and examine all of our prejudices and inherent biases to ensure we receive unbiased answers. This takes effort. It is always easier to simply accept the ideas presented to us than to question the status quo.

I like a writer who cares and takes sides. Pretending to be unbiased is only another kind of bias, and pretending to be dispassionate is often a way of supporting the status quo.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy In psychology, one of the most well-known self-defeating behaviors is the “sunk cost fallacy.” It explains why people remain stuck in their circumstances even though they would rather be elsewhere. Some examples are staying in an unfulfilling relationship or keeping a safe but boring job even though you have the opportunity to get better employment. The status quo bias describes the human disposition to cling to what we are familiar with instead of reaching for the unknown. Similar to the Pareto Principle (discussed in chapter 17), the concept has its roots in economics and was founded by economists Richard Zeckhauser and William Samuelson. In 1988, they published a series of studies in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. The articles highlighted the fact that even though economics attempts to predict the choice a person will take when faced with more than one alternative, in the real world, most people choose to do nothing and carry on as normal.  A more general term for this tendency is ‘inertia.’ Loss Aversion Theory Why is it that we choose to stick with the same jobs, people, and ambitions? A number of reasons have been put forward to explain this behavior. One reason is based on the “loss aversion theory,” which stipulates that in general, people don’t like losing things, and this is true even if the thing they lose wasn’t of high value. Before moving onto something that is perceived as better, we want evidence to prove that it is going to enhance our lives before detaching ourselves from what is not serving us. Although making a change often leads to a more positive outcome, on a subconscious level, we assume that change will do us more harm than good. Even positive change, such as moving to a nicer home or getting married, requires a lot of thought. There is always a cost associated with change, and most of the time, we don’t want to pay the price.

status-quo bias

Hundreds of studies confirm that human forecasts are flawed and biased. Human decision making is not so great either. Again to take just one example, consider what is called the “status quo bias,” a fancy name for inertia. For a host of reasons, which we shall explore, people have a strong tendency to go along with the status quo or default option.

The tendency to continue doing something simply because we have always done it is sometimes called the “status quo bias.” I

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 truth is that in an era where both parties have decided to center corporate interests, identity has been used to culturally pander to the working class so that you can keep screwing them economically. For those who hold power, it’s relatively nonthreatening to embrace a type of change that would only go so far as to change the race or gender of the keepers of the status quo. The great American meritocracy, in which every little boy and girl can ascend to their rightful status, can be venerated and preserved if the only problem with it is bias of race and gender. Once you start thinking hard about class interests and start asking whether there’s really anything so special about those people at the top of the meritocracy, that is ultimately a much more dangerous and potentially transformational view.  What really threatens American elites isn’t the notion that we need more women or more people of color with their boot on the throat of the working class, the real threat comes when people start asking why the working class should have a boot on their throat at all.

Blame cultures in businesses rely on this behavioral bias because people are too fearful to question poor decision-making and challenge the status quo.

The omission bias helps explain why a customer who states their intent to abandon the status quo may still end up in a state of indecision, worrying over whether to take action. But it doesn’t, in and of itself, explain what errors customers are so fearful of committing.

It is the element of commitment which sets Cabral apart from the common run of intellectuals who boast of being ‘neutral’ and ‘un-biased’, thereby passively accepting the perpetuation of the colonial status quo.

The status quo bias describes the human disposition to cling to what we are familiar with instead of reaching for the unknown.