The role of attention in status quo bias

Abstract

In many decision-making contexts, people often persist with their previous selections. This predisposition to choose to maintain a current (or previous) choice is referred to as the status quo bias (SQB). In this work, we propose that increased attention towards the status quo option—enabled by its visual salience—is a previously underappreciated driver of SQB. We base this hypothesis on three propositions: (1) the status quo bias option is often more visually salient relative to the non-status quo options on offer, (2) greater visual salience of an option biases attention towards that option, and (3) increased attention towards an option leads to that option being selected at greater rates. We examined the attention hypothesis among 6,854 participants in four studies. Studies 1 and 2 showed that increasing the visual salience of a non-status quo option (i.e., the type of visual salience often garnered by the status quo option) increased the selection rate of that option. Study 3 directly tested the hypothesis by lessening the visual salience of the status quo option. Doing so eliminated SQB. Study 4 replicated and extended the findings of Study 3 in a real-world decision context. Collectively, these studies suggest that the selection of the status quo may often be related to its salience relative to other available options.