Status Quo Bias
Ever since becoming a father, Jerome has employed the same approach to discipline that he grew up with: shouting angrily at his twins when they misbehave. Recently, however, Jerome has realized that his methods are problematic. After a conversation with his children's school counselor and some online research, he’s learned that yelling at children is ineffective and damaging.
Jerome has vowed never to yell at his kids again, as well as to learn and use alternative discipline strategies. But despite his good intentions, he continues to raise his voice when the boys act out.
Jerome is instinctively sticking with his status quo, or default, behavior. He has fallen victim to the status quo bias, or the near-universal human tendency to leave things as they currently are rather than actively pursuing alternative options.
Why it’s relevant to parent engagement:
Most parenting interventions aim to convince parents to adopt new behaviors. Nearly all such interventions must therefore contend with status quo bias and the resultant resistance to change. Simply convincing parents of the desired behavior’s benefits or giving them the resources to switch is often insufficient. Parents may theoretically agree to change but not follow through.
Parents stick to familiar habits because of real or imagined switching costs, which can transform even small changes into intimidating hurdles. They might also feel emotionally attached to “the way things have always been” or reluctant to admit that they were doing something wrong.
By considering exactly how status quo bias may affect the targets of any given behavioral change intervention, practitioners can modify the program to take this bias into account.
Evidence:
Notable examples of the status quo bias include organ donation and retirement savings. In nations where residents must actively sign up to become organ donors, few do so. In contrast, in countries that flip the status quo by considering everyone a donor unless a person opts out, as many as 99% remain organ donors.
Another classic example of status quo bias concerns green energy. After two German towns began offering green energy as residents’ default power source (with an opt-out option), more than 94% of customers maintained the default choice. Other towns asked customers to opt in. In these towns, only 1% took the initiative to switch their energy source.
Status quo bias also affects the adoption of new technologies and processes in workplaces and communities. For example, status quo bias has been linked to lost productivity stemming from employee resistance to new corporate initiatives. Hundreds of organizations have identified user resistance as the single largest challenge to implementing large-scale information systems projects.
Recently, status quo bias has been successfully exploited to promote healthy eating among children and families. For example, in experimental contexts, parents choosing meals for their children almost universally opted for healthy menu options when these were presented as defaults. In contrast, when an unhealthy meal was framed as the default, no parents chose the healthier option. z
Healthy Beyond Pregnancy, an intervention designed to encourage low-income new mothers to return to their healthcare providers for a postpartum visit, takes status quo bias into account. The program schedules participants for a postpartum visit by default, in contrast to standard models of care, which usually wait for new mothers to call and schedule an appointment. A small study of the program showed that participants were more likely to return for a postpartum visit, compared with a control group.
At
:
As part of-NYC, a collaboration with New York City’s Newborn Home Visiting Program, beELL has used the power of defaults to combat status quo bias. Our intervention automatically enrolled new mothers in the Talk to Your Baby (TTYB) program, an early language and literacy intervention that uses text messages to support positive parenting and prompt parents to read, sing, and talk to their babies. Parents were allowed to opt out at any time.
The results were striking: 95% of parents enrolled in TTYB participated in the program. In contrast, only 1% of parents who had the option to sign up on their own did so.
Ever since becoming a father, Jerome has employed the same approach to discipline that he grew up with: shouting angrily at his twins when they misbehave. Recently, however, Jerome has realized that his methods are problematic. After a conversation with his children's school counselor and some online research, he’s learned that yelling at children is ineffective and damaging.
Jerome has vowed never to yell at his kids again, as well as to learn and use alternative discipline strategies. But despite his good intentions, he continues to raise his voice when the boys act out.
Jerome is instinctively sticking with his status quo, or default, behavior. He has fallen victim to the status quo bias, or the near-universal human tendency to leave things as they currently are rather than actively pursuing alternative options.
Why it’s relevant to parent engagement:
Most parenting interventions aim to convince parents to adopt new behaviors. Nearly all such interventions must therefore contend with status quo bias and the resultant resistance to change. Simply convincing parents of the desired behavior’s benefits or giving them the resources to switch is often insufficient. Parents may theoretically agree to change but not follow through.
Parents stick to familiar habits because of real or imagined switching costs, which can transform even small changes into intimidating hurdles. They might also feel emotionally attached to “the way things have always been” or reluctant to admit that they were doing something wrong.
By considering exactly how status quo bias may affect the targets of any given behavioral change intervention, practitioners can modify the program to take this bias into account.
Evidence:
Notable examples of the status quo bias include organ donation and retirement savings. In nations where residents must actively sign up to become organ donors, few do so. In contrast, in countries that flip the status quo by considering everyone a donor unless a person opts out, as many as 99% remain organ donors.
1,
Abadie, A., & Gay, S. (2006). The impact of presumed consent legislation on cadaveric organ donation: A cross-country study. Journal of Health Economics, 25(4), 599-620.
2
Johnson, E. J., & Goldstein, D. (2003). Do defaults save lives? Science, 302(5649), 1338-1339.
The evidence is similarly dramatic in the area of retirement savings, where inverting the status quo from “not saving” to “saving” via automatic enrollment can more than double the proportion of individuals who save money for retirement.
3
Choi, J. J., Laibson, D., Madrian, B. C., & Metrick, A. (2003). Optimal defaults. American Economic Review, 93(2), 180-185.
Another classic example of status quo bias concerns green energy. After two German towns began offering green energy as residents’ default power source (with an opt-out option), more than 94% of customers maintained the default choice. Other towns asked customers to opt in. In these towns, only 1% took the initiative to switch their energy source.
4
Pichert, D., & Katsikopoulos, K. V. (2008). Green defaults: Information presentation and pro-environmental behaviour. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28(1), 63-73.
Status quo bias also affects the adoption of new technologies and processes in workplaces and communities. For example, status quo bias has been linked to lost productivity stemming from employee resistance to new corporate initiatives. Hundreds of organizations have identified user resistance as the single largest challenge to implementing large-scale information systems projects.
5
Kim, H. W., & Kankanhalli, A. (2009). Investigating user resistance to information systems implementation: A status quo bias perspective. MIS Quarterly, 33(3), 567-582.
Similarly, development experts working to promote public health initiatives (vaccines, deworming pills, handwashing practices, etc.) have found their work significantly slowed by target populations’ reluctance to abandon the status quo.
Recently, status quo bias has been successfully exploited to promote healthy eating among children and families. For example, in experimental contexts, parents choosing meals for their children almost universally opted for healthy menu options when these were presented as defaults. In contrast, when an unhealthy meal was framed as the default, no parents chose the healthier option. z
6,
Loeb, K. L., Radnitz, C., Keller, K. L., Schwartz, M. B., Zucker, N., Marcus, S., . . . & DeLaurentis, D. (2018). The application of optimal defaults to improve elementary school lunch selections: Proof of concept. Journal of School Health, 88(4), 265-271.
7
Loeb, K. L., Radnitz, C., Keller, K., Schwartz, M. B., Marcus, S., Pierson, R. N., . . . & DeLaurentis, D. (2017). The application of defaults to optimize parents’ health-based choices for children. Appetite, 113, 368-375.
In a real-world setting, nearly half of visitors to Disney World stuck with healthy menu options presented as defaults when ordering meals at the resort's restaurants.
8
Peters, J., Beck, J., Lande, J., Pan, Z., Cardel, M., Ayoob, K., & Hill, J. O. (2016). Using healthy defaults in Walt Disney World restaurants to improve nutritional choices. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 1(1), 92-103.
Healthy Beyond Pregnancy, an intervention designed to encourage low-income new mothers to return to their healthcare providers for a postpartum visit, takes status quo bias into account. The program schedules participants for a postpartum visit by default, in contrast to standard models of care, which usually wait for new mothers to call and schedule an appointment. A small study of the program showed that participants were more likely to return for a postpartum visit, compared with a control group.
9
Himes, K. P., Donovan, H., Wang, S., Weaver, C., Grove, J. R., & Facco, F. L. (2017). Healthy beyond pregnancy, a web-based intervention to improve adherence to postpartum care: Randomized controlled feasibility trial. JMIR Human Factors, 4(4):e26.
At
:
As part of
-NYC, a collaboration with New York City’s Newborn Home Visiting Program, beELL has used the power of defaults to combat status quo bias. Our intervention automatically enrolled new mothers in the Talk to Your Baby (TTYB) program, an early language and literacy intervention that uses text messages to support positive parenting and prompt parents to read, sing, and talk to their babies. Parents were allowed to opt out at any time.
The results were striking: 95% of parents enrolled in TTYB participated in the program. In contrast, only 1% of parents who had the option to sign up on their own did so.