Status quo bias is evident when people prefer things to stay the same by doing nothing…or by sticking with a decision made previously (Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988)
When was the last time you changed your energy, Internet, or mobile phone provider? There are plenty of studies that have shown that making this kind of change is not the norm even though we know there are potential benefits to be gained, and that legislation has been put in place to help us make it easier. This may seem like a pedestrian example but it highlights our tendency to stick with the status quo, and the very real impact felt when the status quo is ripped from us.
In changing behaviour we need to think about the why and the how. Why do you want to make the change you are thinking of and how will you achieve it? Once you have clarified why and how, you can explore the barriers that might stand in your way. These can be:
- Lack of knowledge or skills
- Lack of capacity
- Lack of motivation
- A sense of feeling paralysed or overwhelmed – you know what to do but just can’t do it
- The trade-offs, weighing up the costs and losses that may impact our appetite for change. It’s not so much about the change but more a natural ‘loss aversion.’
- Decision fatigue, we’re being faced with lots of decisions and change at the moment, and we can get a bit lazy or demotivated by having one more thing added to the pile
One way of thinking about behaviour change is to look at both our motivation and our capabilities. The diagram above shows four broad categories determined by our level of motivation and skills:
- Simple and routine tasks (e.g. doing the washing up): we don’t need a lot of motivation and the demands on our abilities are relatively low
- Simple but novel tasks (e.g. making homemade soup for the first time): this will feel hard the first few times and you will need to be motivated to stick with it
- Complex but routine tasks (e.g. travelling to a familiar place): this will have an element of habit and feel easy even though it requires a range of skills to achieve it
- Complex and novel tasks (e.g. managing a crisis): arguably the hardest quadrant because it requires both high levels of capability and motivation
Behaviour change requires us to move between quadrants, with the move to ‘Complex and Novel Tasks’ being the most demanding. It is partly why this year has felt so taxing for most of us, we are having to sustain high levels of motivation at the same time as learning new and complex skills on an almost continuous basis. It is perhaps no wonder we have tried to offset this with baking sour dough or taking a walk. One of the hardest elements of the current context is we are having to learn new skills and implement changes, like redundancies that we are not necessarily motivated to do. We are being confronted by difficult choices between being motivated by the survival of an organisation as opposed to a contented team.
If we think about this framework in relation to behaviour change, it highlights a number of questions:
- Do you have the skills you need for the new situation or task?
- Are you motivated to achieve the change?
- What is/are your barrier/s to change?
- What degree of change is needed?
Asking good questions has been found to be more effective in creating behaviour change than telling yourself or others to make a change. To give a simple example asking myself if I was prepared to put in the time to learn Photoshop properly was more effective for me than telling myself I really needed to learn Photoshop. This use of a closed question, forcing a yes or no answer can be a very helpful starting point.
When you are facing change or working with others having to respond to change try and think about which types of behaviour change are involved.
References:
BERKMAN, E. T. 2018. The neuroscience of goals and behavior change. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 70, 28.
SAMUELSON, W. & ZECKHAUSER, R. 1988. Status quo bias in decision making. Journal of risk and uncertainty, 1, 7-59.