The
status quo bias is a
cognitive biasA cognitive bias is a person's tendency to make errors in judgment based on cognitive factors, and is a phenomenon studied in cognitive science and social psychology. Forms of cognitive bias include errors in statistical judgment, social attribution, and memory that are common to all human beings....
for the
status quoStatus quo, commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" literally "the state in which", is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
; in other words, people tend not to change an established behavior unless the incentive to change is compelling.
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The
status quo bias is a
cognitive biasA cognitive bias is a person's tendency to make errors in judgment based on cognitive factors, and is a phenomenon studied in cognitive science and social psychology. Forms of cognitive bias include errors in statistical judgment, social attribution, and memory that are common to all human beings....
for the
status quoStatus quo, commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" literally "the state in which", is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
; in other words, people tend not to change an established behavior unless the incentive to change is compelling.
The finding has been observed in many fields, including
political sciencePolitical science is a social science concerned with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. It is often described as the pragmatic application of the art and science of politics defined as "who gets what, when and how",...
and
economicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
.
KahnemanDaniel Kahneman is an Israeli psychologist and Nobel laureate, notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology....
,
ThalerRichard H. Thaler is an American economist. He is perhaps best known as a theorist in behavioral finance, and for his collaboration with Daniel Kahneman and others in further defining that field....
and Knetsch created experiments that could produce this effect reliably. They attribute it to a combination of
loss aversionIn prospect theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Some studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains....
and the
endowment effectIn behavioral economics, the endowment effect is a hypothesis that people value a good or service more once their property right to it has been established. In other words, people place a higher value on objects they own than objects that they do not...
, two ideas relevant to
prospect theoryProspect theory is a theory that describes decisions between alternatives that involve risk, i.e. alternatives with uncertain outcomes, where the probabilities are known...
.
See also
- Conservatism
Conservatism is the diverse political and social philosophy that supports tradition and the status quo, or that calls for a return to the values and society of an earlier age, the status quo ante. However, the term has been used by politicians and political commentators with a variety of meanings...
- List of cognitive biases
- System justification
System justification theory refers to a social psychological tendency to defend and bolster the status quo, that is, to see it as good, fair, legitimate, and desirable...
- Situationism (psychology)
Situationism in psychology refers to an approach to personality that holds that people are more influenced by external, situational factors than by internal traits or motivations....