Status quo bias

The status quo bias is a cognitive bias for the status quo; in other words, people tend not to change an established behavior unless the incentive to change is compelling. It should be distinguished from rational preference for the status quo per se due to, for example, information effects, which cannot explain all experimental results.

The finding has been observed in many fields, including political science and economics. Nick Bostrom argues that status quo bias may play a large role in opposition to human enhancement, and has proposed the reversal test to reduce it.

Examples

Kahneman, Thaler and Knetsch created experiments that could produce this effect reliably. 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. Subjects tended to remain with the status quo when such a position was offered to them.

The US states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania inadvertently ran a real-life experiment providing evidence of the status quo bias in the early 1990s. 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. In New Jersey the cheaper option was the default and most citizens selected it, while only a minority chose it in Pennsylvania where the more expensive option was the default. Similar effects have been shown for contributions to retirement plans, choice of internet privacy policies and the decision to become an organ donor.

Possible 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. 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.

See also

• Norm (social)
• List of cognitive biases
• System justification
• Situationism (psychology)

Further reading:

• Johnson, E. J., Hershey, J., Meszaros, J., & Kunreuther, H. (1993). Framing, Probability Distortions, and Insurance Decisions. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7, pp. 35-51.