The Why #45: Why do we always eat the same thing for breakfast?
By Dan Monheit 30.6.22
Question submitted by Sarah, Newtown.
I can see it now Sarah. The morning routine is in full swing. You’re up and about, looking fly and ready to start it right with ‘the most important meal of the day’ (at least according to an iconic Kellogg’s advertising campaign from the mid 1900s).
You’ve read last week’s The Why, smashed today’s Wordle and are all caught up on socials before your two slices of sourdough have even popped out from the toaster. It’s not until you go to add ‘four avocados’ and ‘fancy feta’ to your weekly shopping list that you realise you can’t remember the last time you ate anything different.
It’s weird, hey? While we might recoil at the idea of having the same chicken stir fry two nights in a row, 78 consecutive days of ‘avo and feta on toast’ for breaky feels more like sweet (salty?) liberation than a curse.
Sure, it could be that toast + avo + feta is objectively the most perfect morning meal ever assembled. Or maybe our entire generation has been exposed to subliminal avocado advertising since birth, making resistance futile. Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a behavioural bias at play…
Status Quo Bias
Status Quo Bias refers to our preference to stick with whatever is known, familiar and maintains the current state of affairs — even if that current state isn’t the best state it could be. Whilst we think we love change, Status Quo Bias does a great job of helping us stay the same.
In 1991, psychologists Hartman, Doane and Woo put Status Quo Bias to the test by examining how Californians chose their electricity service. Participants in the study were asked to rate the reliability of their current electricity provider, whether they experienced power shortages, if so how often, and if they had any other issues. Participants who believed their current provider was generally reliable were placed into Group One. Those who thought the opposite were placed into Group Two.
Both groups were asked to compare and assess six alternative electricity services, each with different reliability ranges and rates. Some options were far cheaper, others far more reliable. Overall, there was a good chance participants would find a better service.
When asked to select a provider to go forward with, 60.2% of participants in Group One (generally reliable) chose to remain with their current provider. Interestingly, almost the same proportion of participants in Group Two (58.3%) also chose to stay with their current provider, despite feeling like there were legitimate reliability issues.
Logically, this makes no sense at all, especially considering there were cheaper and more reliable options on offer. However, the desire to ‘stick with what you know’ can be a far bigger motivator than we might appreciate - even if ‘what you know’ is clearly a sub-par option.
According to ‘prospect theory’ (thanks Kahneman and Tversky), the reason we’re so reluctant to make changes is that "losses loom larger than gains". In other words, we imagine the impact of things going wrong to be far greater than the impact of things going right.
Think about it. You decide to branch out and try porridge for breakfast. You’ll need to visit an unfamiliar aisle, take a chance on a brand you’ve never bought before, spend a bunch of money, learn a new skill, and all for the possibility that you’ll be left with a bowl of bland, lumpy mush.
Or you could stick with trusty ol’ avo…
For brands, selling the obvious benefits of your product or service may not be enough to nudge buyers out of their safe, familiar habits. Instead, find ways to show consumers that avoiding change is actually the riskiest choice of all, knowing that their fear of loss will be far more motivating than their need for incremental gain.
Behaviourally Yours,
PS If you missed the last edition, you can still check out why you get ads for things you’ve just talked about here.
Bad Decisions Podcast
Learn more about Status Quo Bias in episode 23 of the Bad Decisions podcast.
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