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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Soc. Psychol.
Sec. Attitudes, Social Justice and Political Psychology
Volume 2 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frsps.2024.1360377
This article is part of the Research Topic The Political Psychology of Social Change View all 8 articles

Social Change Requires More Justification than Maintaining the Status Quo

Provisionally accepted
John C. Blanchar John C. Blanchar 1*Scott Eidelman Scott Eidelman 2Eric Allen Eric Allen 3
  • 1 Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, United States
  • 2 Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, North Carolina, United States
  • 3 Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Three studies demonstrate that, all else being equal, the threshold for justifying social change is higher than the threshold for maintaining the status quo. Higher standards for justifying change were observed across institutional requirements (Study 1), political candidates (Study 2), and city ordinances (Study 3). In all studies, lopsided standards increased as status quo preference increased. Study 1 revealed higher standards for novel entities lacking precedence, Study 2 demonstrated increased information-seeking about non-status quo alternatives to scrutinize them, and Study 3 showed biased interpretation of evidence toward maintaining the status quo, even when evidence skewed towards advocating change. The robustness of higher standards for change (d = 0.69; k = 7, N = 535), its relationship with status quo preference (r = .39; k = 7, N = 533), and information seeking scrutinizing alternatives (d = 1.17; k = 5, N = 285), rather than confirmation bias (d = 0.03; k = 5, N = 285), was established via small-scale meta-analyses including all data collected for this research program. Implications for theories of social change versus status quo maintenance are discussed.

    Keywords: Status Quo Bias, Social Change, information search, Existence bias, Shifting standards

    Received: 22 Dec 2023; Accepted: 08 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Blanchar, Eidelman and Allen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: John C. Blanchar, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, United States

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