The fictional status quo and how to overcome it

How we get played by the fictional status quo into thinking that not taking action is the stable alternative. On status quo bias, sunk cost fallacy and loss aversion.

Welcome back to Climate Psyched, the newsletter where we explore all things psychological, behavioral and emotional related to the climate and ecosystem crises.

My friend Kim over at We Can Fix It sent out a great post the other day that references the latest Global Sustainable Development Report, and summarizes how transformation happens in three phases with two parallell tracks: phasing out the harmful and scaling up the sustainable. Transition isn’t linear, she writes, and large scale transformation means that opposing forces inevitably will clash.

In the field of climate psychology, one of the most pressing questions is Why aren’t more people taking action when we know how how urgent things are?
Unsurprisingly this is a question with multiple answers, since behavior change is affected by several factors, where opposing forces often clash - sometimes between groups of people, but also not seldom within oneself.

One factor that I often find to be underreported about is what I usually refer to as the fictional status quo.

Situation

Climate mitigation efforts, like new policies, laws, infrastructural changes and voluntary behavior changes are often framed as efforts or sacrifices.

For example, William Nordhaus, a widely criticized yet influential climate economist, predicts in his research that that the optimal level (for the economy that is) of global warming would be between 3 and 4 degrees Celsius and that a warming of 6 degrees C would only lower GDP by 8,5%. Mitigating efforts to keep temperatures lower are more costly than doing nothing. Status quo, as in doing nothing or at least not make massive changes, is framed as the sensible choice until warming is much higher.

When politicians talk about the climate transition as a larger sacrifice than postponing mitigation efforts, or say things similar to what Sweden’s prime minister did before being elected in 2022: “My goal is not that people should change their lives” (my translation), they base their statements on the existence of a fictional status quo: that there is a scenario where we can carry on with business as usual and still manage to keep things as they are right now. That status quo is the stable, safe option, and that change is the costly one.

The problem with the fictional status quo is of course that it’s fictional, and that there is no real scenario where we postpone or avoid massive climate mitigation and keep earth an inhabitable, safe place. Keep calm and carry on is not an option. To frame change as the costly and sacrificing alternative is however efficient communication since it plays into people’s status quo bias, sunk cost fallacy and loss aversion.

Picture from unsplash.com, by Christophe Hautier

Explanation

There are a number of factors, external and internal, that play into people’s tendency to wanting to keep things as they are, and that together can be hindering for bringing about sufficient change to tackle the climate crisis. But that also fit in nicely with the fictional status quo.

Status quo bias

The term status quo bias was first introduced in the research literature by scientists William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser back in 1988, in a lengthy paper covering a number of experiments that showed how people generally are prone to stick with the status quo, i.e. the alternative that already is in place. Change seems to in itself entail a certain cost, especially when one alternative is explicitly framed as the status quo. Samuelson and Zeckhauser could in their experiments see that the status quo bias influenced people’s decision making across a range of different decisions in various sectors. They also saw that the bias became weaker when a person had a stronger preference for a certain alternative, but on the contrary became relatively stronger when more alternatives of choice were presented. Freedom of choice, it seems, makes us more prone to stick with what we already have. As with many psychological biases people tend to be surprised that they’re affected by them - most of us want to perceive ourselves and be perceived as rational and independently choosing individuals, even though human decision making often reveals that we’re not.

Samuelson and Zeckhauser notes that one factor influencing the status quo bias might be innate conservatism. The general nature of conservatism is to believe that it’s beneficial to remain in the current state, even when change might bring more, or at least similar, value. Picking up on this, Hofman and colleagues have investigated how the status quo bias, conservatism (represented by status quo bias and confirmation bias) and information hassle (a micro-stressor caused by complex information) can hinder the adoption of innovative sustainable technologies in the building sector - a sector that plays an important role in the climate transition, but whose progress yet is too slow.

Conducting a survey study, their results, however from a small sample, indicate that high levels of status quo bias lower professionals’ intent to adopt sustainable innovations, and that a higher level of complex information hassle is associated with a higher level of status quo bias. That is: if the information about the new innovation is too complex, people seem to become more prone to stick with status quo (note that the study could not establish any causality). The status quo bias also tends to be higher when there’s a lack of information about sustainable innovation altogether. Interestingly, the status quo bias, as well as perceived information hassle, was lower amongst professionals working in larger organizations, which, the researchers discuss, might be due to larger companies having a more diverse workforce and better systems for knowledge-sharing, meaning better capacity to share and process complex information about new alternatives. Organizational structure might be one answer to overcoming status quo bias. Communicating in clear and concise messages that eliminates unnecessary information about sustainable alternatives, innovations and policies, might be another way of overcoming the bias. This could also help reveal that the fictional status quo is just that: fictional.

Sunk cost fallacy

Overlapping with the status quo bias is the sunk cost fallacy: the tendency to continue doing something after having invested one’s time, love, effort or money into it. According to classical economic theory, new decisions a person make shouldn’t be based on previous investments of their time and efforts, but rather on the current information they have available at each given moment. If that were the case people would never finish a book or TV show they didn’t enjoy. Everyone would let go of unhealthy relationships and change jobs when the working days no longer felt meaningful. But that's not how people work.

On the contrary, people’s decisions are heavily influenced by the amount of time, money and effort they have put into something. Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer, who wrote the first paper on this phenomenon in the 1980s, showed through various experiments that people are affected by sunk cost fallacy - both when they are unaware and aware about it. Economics students who had read about the problems of sunk cost fallacy, and then participated in the experiments reacted in the same way as students who are unaware of this cognitive bias. Arkes and Blumer pondered why we hold on to and continue to invest time, effort and money in things that don't work well. One reason might be that people generally find it hard to admit that their past investments have been unsuccessful or misguided - or that they were once successful, but are no longer sustainable. Rather than admit that we’ve gone down a path that proved to be unsustainable, we continue to invest in it.

Politicians and powerholders are, as much as other humans, influenced by sunk cost fallacy. For those who over many years have made major investments of their time, money and efforts into a career, ideology or business that require the continued use of fossil fuel, it will probably be more tempting to present a fictional status quo option, than to admit that the current path is unsustainable and start working towards change.

Loss aversion

Also playing into the fictional status quo is another well-established cognitive bias called loss aversion, i.e. the tendency to perceive losses as very costly, and hence being less prone to make changes when their framed as entailing sacrifices. A person with a secure income, for example, will be much sadder if they lose a hundred euros than they will be happy to unexpectedly receive a hundred euros. More precisely, between 2 and 2.5 times more, if we are to believe the scientists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, the researchers who discovered and described this tendency. When they tested the theory of loss aversion, they discovered that people interpret information differently depending on how it’s framed, and that people generally are more keen to avoid losses than they are taking risks to gain wins. If the climate transition is framed as a long number of sacrifices then people will likely be more prone to stick with status quo, especially if a scenario of the fictional status quo is presented as a valid option.

Lack of visions of realistic future scenarios

People having these tendencies and cognitive biases does not mean that we have to be slaves under them. On the contrary, what distinguishes us from other species is our ability to pursue long-term goals, even if they involve a lot uncertainty, sacrifice and hardships along the way. Human societies would not have evolved otherwise. No one would get through a tough education, finish a marathon or mobilize a successful social movement had it not been for the human capacity to strive for long term goals.

But the collaborative motivation for long-term goals are facilitated by having clear and joint visions. As long as the current status quo is the most concrete and vivid alternative, the status quo bias will come into play. One reason that it’s hard to mobilize for change, and to increase willingness to adopt mitigation efforts, is that there’s still a general lack of clear, vivid and realistic future scenarios. We might know what we’re trying to escape, but not fully what we’re working towards. Is it the current status quo - just without the use of fossil fuels - or is it actually something else, and if so, what does that something else look like? It’s beyond the scope of this text, but a topic I hope to come back to later on.

Action

There are numerous things do to in order to call out and overcome the fictional status quo:

• Be aware of the fictional status quo, and see if you can identify it in political debate, media or public discourse.

• When you identify it, practice pointing it out, encourage discussion about it and increase awareness about it.

• Remember that public willingness to act for climate is high and widespread across the world, as is the demand for more political action - using the fictional status quo to gain acceptance amongst the public is actually working against what the majority already wants

• Communicating sustainable alternatives in a clear, concise manner could help to decrease complex information hassle and lower status quo bias

• Framing mitigation options as alternatives associated with gains rather than losses can help reduce loss aversion

• An idea I think would be worth exploring is to start framing change and mitigation efforts as the real alternative to remain as much of status quo (as in a safe and stable world) as possible - keeping the current status quo is fictional, the only alternatives are radical change or massive catastrophes.

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