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P A R T I I I

The Psychological Power

of the Status Quo

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of spices in a curry dish, nearly anything—as being part of the status quo affects how people think and feel about it. In common parlance, the status quo refers to an actual state of affairs. However, in our treatment, we focus on its subjectivity; we define the status quo as what people construe to be an existing state, not what is so in an objective sense.

We review a number of psychological processes that privilege the status quo over alternatives. These proclivities vary in a number ways; we loosely arrange them into cognitive processes and evaluative processes. Because of space limitations, our chapter reviews only a sampling of these processes that lead to pro status quo biases; we provide a fuller review elsewhere (Eidelman & Crandall, 2009).

PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA PROMOTING

THE STATUS QUO

A host of psychological phenomena advantage the status quo. We consider two general forms of this advantage, one concerning cognitive process and the other evaluation. These mechanisms operate in tandem, promoting existing states over alternatives. Our organization is expository, not theoretical—to the extent that multiple cognitive and affective processes can proceed simultaneously; then, processes that favor the status quo may also co-occur.

Cognitive Processing Advantages of the Status Quo

Extant states are more likely to be encountered and considered than alternatives. Indeed, people may be unaware that alternatives are even possible (Sloman, 1996). Even with awareness of alternatives, existing states are more available, and therefore cognitively accessible. The status quo is likely to be recognized and processed earlier than alternatives, and used as a start value when considering alternatives. The status quo is also likely to be a point of comparison, securing its mental dominance. Additional processes increase the difficulty of recognizing and accepting alternatives. We elaborate on all of these points in this section.

Accessibility. The status quo is relatively ubiquitous by comparison; people have a longer history and more experience with existing states than with alternatives. We are more familiar with leaders of dominant political parties, products of established companies, and the norms and customs of the cultures of which we are a part. Exposure to and experiences with existing states should be frequent and recent, and they should be more chronically accessible in memory than other alternatives as a result (Higgins, 1996). The presence of the many affiliated cues of the status quo will make status quo

outcomes that are discrepant from what is already established. Primacy is also implicated in the biasing effects of anchoring and contributes to the placement of the status quo as a reference point against which alternatives will be judged. These points are described next.

Anchoring. Because status quo alternatives come first, they are also likely to serve as a start value from which people may (or may not) move. In fact, a substantial literature on the anchoring heuristic suggests that people insufficiently adjust from that which is mentally accessible. For example, Tversky and Kahneman (1974) asked participants to estimate the percentage of African countries making up the United Nations immediately after being presented with a 0–100 “wheel of fortune” rigged to land at either 10 or 65. Demonstrating the powerful effects of anchoring, on average participants estimated 25% when landing on 10, and 45% when landing on 65.

Anchoring effects are not limited to numerical estimates. Judgments of the self (e.g., Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard, 1975) and others (Tversky & Kahneman, 1980) are not revised in light of subsequent information, and additional evidence suggests that people anchor on dispositional attributions during impression formation (Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988; Quattrone, 1982). The effects of anchoring can also have profound social consequences. Greenberg, Williams, and O’Brien (1986) provided mock jurors in a murder trial with one of two sets of instructions, to consider either the harshest possible verdict first (first degree manslaughter) or the most lenient possible verdict first (not guilty). Those asked to consider the harshest possible verdict first demonstrated a bias toward guilty verdicts, recommending harsher sentences than those instructed to consider the most lenient verdict first.

The connection between anchoring and the status quo is clear; existing states will serve as an arbitrary anchor, and one with greater underlying legitimacy than a random number. For example, it is common in most criminal cases in the United States for jurors to be instructed to consider the harshest sentence first. In this case, current practice biases the consideration of alternatives; rarely is the adjustment from this start value sufficient (Greenberg et al., 1986).2

2 Not all anchoring effects need be understood in terms of insufficient adjustment. Instead, evidence suggests that a combination of priming and selective hypothesis testing (e.g., Mussweiler, 2003) may be responsible for such effects. An important determinant of which process is operating is whether the source of the anchor is external or self-generated, with self-generated anchors being more likely to be insufficiently adjusted (Epley & Gilovich, 2001). We note that both priming and biased hypothesis testing are processes likely to favor existing states.

Cognitive Reference Points. When making comparisons, it is necessary to conceive of a referent against which a target may be compared. Three determinants of whether something serves as a referent are familiarity (Karylowski, 1990; Tversky & Gati, 1978), frequency of exposure (Polk, Behensky, Gonzalez, & Smith, 2002), and primacy (Agostinelli, Sherman, Fazio, & Hearst, 1986; Bruine de Bruin & Keren, 2003), all characteristics that distinguish the status quo from other alternatives. For these reasons, existing states are likely to serve as reference points against which alternatives are judged and compared. Given their respective political systems, Americans will consider communism in reference to democracy; the Chinese will consider democracy in reference to communism.

Being the referent in social judgment carries several advantages. For example, it is the referent of comparison that determines the dimensions on which evaluation will occur (Medin, Glodstone, & Gentner, 1993). Another important consequence is that alternatives will be more easily assimilated to the referent than vice-versa. Rosch (1975) found support for this claim with the natural and nonsocial categories of color, line orientation, and numbers. For example, participants were more likely to indicate (with linguistic hedges) that nonprototypic numbers within the decimal system, such as 11, are closer to (“basically” and “essentially”) prototypic numbers like 10 than the other way around. Perceptions of similarity are greater when familiar entities, such as well-known countries (Tversky, 1977) and social categories (Holyoak & Gordon, 1983), are referents in a forced comparison (“How similar is Ivory Coast to the United States?”) than when the target is the referent (“How similar is the United States to Ivory Coast?”), also suggesting assimilation to that which has been established. Because the status quo entities are more familiar, more frequently encountered, and more prototypic, other alternatives will be assimilated to them.

Feature-Positive Effect. The status quo is more available and accessible than are other alternatives. As such, “nonoccurrences” of other alternatives lack the salience that occurrences provide. Because it is difficult to recognize that the absence of a feature is informative (Jenkins & Sainsbury, 1970; Newman, Wolff, & Hearst, 1980; Ross, 1977), the importance of nonoccurrence is often underappreciated or overlooked entirely, and alternatives to the status quo may go unnoticed.

The feature-positive effect is a case in point (Jenkins & Sainsbury, 1970; Newman et al., 1980). Animals, young children, and adult humans all have been found to learn more quickly when a feature is present than when it is absent. For example, college students were substantially better at discriminating between cards that were “good” and “not good” when the pres-

ence of a symbol indicated goodness than when it indicated the “absence” of goodness (Newman et al., 1980). The same findings have been found when the positive outcome is indicated by the presence of food, the occurrence of a light, or the addition of points; when a negative outcome is indicated by the absence of these events, people learn more poorly. Because reinforcement, payoffs, and learning about them occur in status quo environments, we learn well about the features that are present, but we fail to learn from what is missing. As a result, alternative strategies, payoffs that may be much greater on untested practices, and so on, are much harder to learn. Because alternative states are feature-negative, they will be less informative, and learning from them will be more difficult. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, most people quite easily miss the importance of the dog not barking in the night.

Blocking and Overshadowing in Classical Conditioning. Other learning processes advantage the status quo as well. For example, Kamin (1969) demonstrated that the prior conditioning of a stimulus may block the subsequent conditioning of cues with which the stimulus had been paired; a second, conditioned stimulus does not produce a conditioned response if previously paired with the first conditioned stimulus (Kamin, 1969; Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). Because the status quo precedes other arrangements, the learning of other alternatives is likely to be obstructed. Similarly, learning alternatives to the status quo should be hindered through the process of overshadowing: the more salient of two simultaneously presented stimuli is more likely to be conditioned (Bouton, 2004; Kamin, 1969). Given their cognitive dominance, existing states will be more salient and tend to overshadow other possibilities. In short, the availability, accessibility, and primacy of the status quo will inhibit the pairing of alternatives with stimuli for which it is already associated.

Evidence that blocking promotes existing social arrangements comes from Sanbonmatsu, Akimoto, and Gibson (1994), who demonstrated the inhibiting power of stereotypes on the learning of an alternative causal relationship. Participants read descriptions of students who took a course in a gender-typed domain. Various pieces of information were provided, including students’ gender, course load, and grades. When a covariation consistent with stereotypes was present (e.g., gender and academic performance), recognition of nonstereotypic covariation (course load and academic performance) was blocked; participants were less likely to notice an actual relationship inconsistent with the cultural stereotype. As culturally shared expectations that justify existing social arrangements, stereotypes maintain and promote the status quo (Jost & Banaji, 1994, see also Crandall &

Eshleman, 2003). In this case, such a process occurred through the blocking of new, alternative associations.

Counterfactual Thinking. Counterfactual thinking is a cognitive process in which one simulates “alternatives to past or present factual events or circumstances” (Roese & Olson, 1995). The ability to endorse a non–status quo position requires that one invests some time in counterfactual thinking— people are unlikely to endorse a novel process, procedure, or politics without imagining what some of the outcomes would be (Roese & Olson, 1995). Although some counterfactual thinking appears automatically in response to unexpected or negative events, counterfactual thoughts are typically more effortful than thinking about the status quo, and require a motivational source to initiate them (e.g., unhappiness, a failure in understanding the world) (Roese, 1997). In the absence of an instigating motive, counterfactual reasoning is unlikely to take place, and the probability and value of alternatives to the status quo do not enter consciousness or decision making. Counterfactual reasoning occurs only after a significant impetus; it requires a motivational trigger (Roese, 1997). In this way, the research on counterfactual reasoning (which is effectively “counter–status quo reasoning”) provides a good analogy for some elements of our argument. The status quo has several cognitive advantages, but under the proper motivating conditions, alternatives can be considered, evaluated, and preferred. But also like counterfactual reasoning, in the absence of these triggers, consideration of alternatives is unlikely.

Summary. Existing states are psychologically prominent; they are more likely to be available and to be cognitively accessible. At the same time, alternatives to the status quo are placed at a disadvantage because they are harder to recognize, process, and learn from. These cognitive processes advantage what has already been established. In addition, imagining cognitive alternatives is more difficult, time-consuming, and effortful. It requires imagination and motivation, and an energy-conserving organism without sufficient motivation will avoid it. It is only under the appropriate motivating conditions that alternatives to the status quo will be considered.

Although advantageous, these above-mentioned findings do not necessitate an evaluative advantage for the status quo. Many thoughts and ideas that are available and accessible are disliked and devalued, and people work hard to avoid their consideration (e.g., Wegner, 1994; Wilson & Brekke, 1994). Yet, there is good reason to think that existing states will also benefit from several evaluative biases that favor existing states. We now turn to affective processes that, in combination with cognitive processes, create a fairly strong advantage for the status quo.