Have you ever wondered why society hardly ever changes? I think most of us have.

One answer is that humans have a mental bias towards maintaining the status quo. People think like this all the time. They tend to go with what they know rather than a new, unknown option.

People feel safer with the established order in the face of potential change. That's partly why people buy the same things they bought before, return to the same restaurants and keep espousing the same opinions.

This has been called the 'system justification bias' and it has some paradoxical effects (research is described in Jost et al., 2004):

• Poor people don't strongly support the sorts of political policies that would make them better off. Surveys find that low-income groups are hardly more likely than high-income groups to want tax changes that mean they will get more money. Generally people's politics doesn't line up with their position in society.
• Oddly, the more disadvantaged people are, the more they are likely to support a system that is doing them no favours. This is because of cognitive dissonance. In one US example of this low-income Latinos are more likely to trust government officials than high-income Latinos.
• Most disturbing of all: the more unequal the society, the more people try to rationalise the system. For example in countries in which men hold more sexist values, women are more likely to support the system.

People seem to rationalise the inequality in society, e.g. poor people are poor because they don't work hard enough and rich people are rich because they deserve it.

Incredibly, this means that some (but not all) turkeys will keep on voting for Christmas.

Image credit: kris krug

Making Habits, Breaking Habits

In his new book, Jeremy Dean--psychologist and author of PsyBlog--looks at how habits work, why they are so hard to change, and how to break bad old cycles and develop new healthy, creative, happy habits.

→ "Making Habits, Breaking Habits", is available now on Amazon.

Reviews
The Bookseller, “Editor’s Pick,” 10/12/12 “Sensible and very readable…By far the most useful of this month’s New You offerings.”

Kirkus Reviews, 1/1/13 “Making changes does take longer than we may expect—no 30-day, 30-pounds-lighter quick fix—but by following the guidelines laid out by Dean, readers have a decent chance at establishing fulfilling, new patterns.”

Publishers Weekly, 12/10/12 “An accessible and informative guide for readers to take control of their lives.”

→ You can dip into the first chapter, or check it out on Amazon.com.