The Fear of Change: Learning Why and How to Overcome

By Mateus Oliveira

Essay provided by a student in Ben Clark’s Grade 12 English class with a special focus on the study of sales and marketing.

Why do we fear change?

Have you ever missed out on a chance because you were too scared to take a risk and instead chose to cling to what you knew? This mindset of staying in your comfort zone may hold you back from new experiences. The dilemma of missing out because you’ve done something a large number of times triggers a response from the brain that changes the way it thinks, as it recognizes it as a key part of your day-to-day life, ultimately stopping the brain’s potential for both innovation and growth.

Choosing Comfort Over Challege

This way of thinking is called Status Quo Bias. It refers to when an individual is unwilling to let go of something because they fear losing it. We often see this taking place when attempting to select classes at the start of the school year, and the truth is that change is a natural process of our lives, but few people can fully handle it.

A student who has always been prone to the “same types of classes”, these being standard level math or science, often feel challenged when faced with the option to try an honors or AP level course. Even though they are capable of succeeding through the course, most decide to stick to their regular classes as they fear the possibility of lower grades or feel discouraged by learning something new. This can be seen through various grades, but it’s most commonly seen in High School, usually from Freshmen to Juniors. During this time, students are still figuring out what truly helps them in the future, as well as what they are capable of. As a result, many chose to stick to the same standard level classes because it feels safer than trying a challenging honors or AP level course.

Roots of the Status Quo Bias

The idea of “Status Quo Bias” was first studied in 1988 by William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, who investigated the first case involving decision-making bias, “Status Quo Framing”. In this study, they gave people surveys with different choices. For one group of participants, they made the questions seem like the “default choice”, while other options were viewed as “changes”. The other group of participants had the same questions as the others, but written in a way that didn’t show one single option as the “default choice”, so it confused the contestants into thinking no question was the right answer. The results showed that for the first group, they picked the “default choice” even though it wasn’t correct.

If this sounds confusing, a better way to understand this concept would be how, when faced with certain decisions, people often go with the choice that seems most familiar to them, at times even ignoring other options.

Overcoming the bias that holds us back

Although concerning, the Status Quo Bias is something from our own nature. However, it is still possible to overcome this issue. By setting goals and looking at our decisions by focusing on what we gain (rather than what we might lose), we can confront this fear of change and overcome barriers that hold us back from growth. Furthermore, this would benefit us not only academically but also allow us to build confidence and adaptability, traits that can help us beyond school.

The Status Quo Bias is something from our own nature. However, it is still possible to overcome this issue. [image by CorporateVisions.com]

References

Pilat, Dan. “Status Quo Bias.” The Decision Lab, The Decision Lab, Mar. 1988, thedecisionlab.com/biases/status-quo-bias. 

Buric, Roman. “Status Quo Bias: Everything You Need to Know.” InsideBE, 24 June 2022, insidebe.com/articles/status-quo-bias/