Media release

From: The University of New South Wales

Have you ever met someone at a party who seemed a bit unfriendly, and you immediately decided to avoid them?

It may have been that the person was having a bad day, or was shy, and was otherwise someone you’d get on with. But because of that initial experience, your original negative view of them stays fixed, and you continue to avoid them.

This is an example of cognitive inertia, where our initial judgments and beliefs resist change, and we get stuck on those beliefs without exploring alternatives.

Far from being a pathological problem, cognitive inertia is very human and affects us all at different times.

Other everyday examples include: sticking to one product brand for years, even when better or cheaper alternatives emerge; finding it hard to let go of an idea to solve a problem, even when better ones emerge later; or having an aversion to tech stocks because you got burnt badly the one time you invested in them.

It’s not so much that people are making wrong decisions in these examples, but they may be limiting themselves to options that are okay while missing out on ones that may be much better.

Professor Brett Hayes, a cognitive psychologist with UNSW Science, recently won an ARC Discovery grant to explore cognitive inertia, how it affects us, and what we can do to overcome our biases and limitations.

“The choices we make based on our initial experiences are fine if the first impression is correct,” Prof. Hayes says.

“But if we look at the party example, you avoid this person based on this initial, false impression. Your avoidance will stop you getting any more evidence that they are actually a decent person, which could otherwise give you a chance to correct your false belief.”

But the thing about these types of false beliefs, says Prof. Hayes, is once they are adopted, they can become vicious cycles where the original view persists even when faced with evidence to the contrary.

What’s going on?

Prof. Hayes and his colleagues have some ideas already about how we might limit our options by our behaviour.

“We think there's a common mechanism that's going on here. It’s a kind of vicious cycle that starts with a negative experience that leads to a false belief, which then leads to behavioural avoidance, which means that you don’t have the opportunity to correct your false belief… and around it goes.

“What’s happening are processes that are normally adaptive – if you have a bad experience, it’s natural to move away and avoid going back to the same experience. It’s just in certain situations, those normally adaptive processes can get us into trouble.”

Prof. Hayes reckons these ‘learning traps’ – where individuals or organisations continue to rely on outdated or ineffective methods despite new information or changing circumstances – can occur to people regardless of their personal predispositions.

“The main thrust of what we’re doing is about developing strategies that we think might help a variety of people escape potential learning traps, or cognitive inertia.”

Child’s play

While it’s too early in his research to say whether there is a certain type of person who may be particularly susceptible – or immune – to cognitive inertia, a clue might be found in the behaviour of children.

“One of the interesting things that has been done in this space is comparing kids and adults in the same kinds of decision-tasks,” says Prof. Hayes.

“And it's one of these cases where the kids do better because – for reasons that we still don't fully understand – kids appear to be wired to explore a bit more, regardless of the consequences, even if things end badly. They're not as fixated on the consequences of their actions as adults are, and so they just have this natural propensity to explore.”

As a result, he says, children are less likely to fall into the vicious ‘learning trap’ cycles because even if they had a bad experience with one option, they’re more likely to go back and try it again to discover it’s not all bad.

There are two theories about why this may be. The first is that kids have more ‘noise’ or distractions in their perception systems. An adult, when presented with a number of options, may stop once a satisfactory one is found, but kids will go on to explore all options. The second theory is that kids put more of a premium on exploring – “they just want to know how the world works, and they’re prepared to pay the price of losing a few points or gold stars along the way”, Prof. Hayes says, adding that he wants to research children’s exploration in more depth.

“What is it that makes kids particularly more exploratory? And I think that would give us some clues as to how we can help everybody be a bit more exploratory when it's appropriate, so we don’t fall back into cognitive inertia traps.”

Start at the beginning

Research already completed in this space has shown it’s very difficult for people to break through cognitive inertia to make better choices. So far, past behavioural experiments run by Professor Todd Gureckis from New York University – who is also a collaborator with Prof. Hayes’ group – had only limited success in getting people to avoid cognitive inertia traps.

“But we've got some new ideas that we think are more promising, that we're going to trial in the course of this grant,” Prof. Hayes says.

First off, the team wants to test the mechanisms that bring about cognitive inertia traps. They will devise behavioural experiments where participants are set tasks that require making a series of choices that can earn rewards. An inertia trap will be evident when people settle for choice options that do not produce the best long-term outcomes.

Armed with this knowledge of the mechanisms that lead to learning traps, the researchers will come up with strategies to help people identify when they’ve fallen into a learning trap, and what they can do to escape it. One idea the researchers will be exploring is whether people are less likely to fall into an inertia trap when they work in teams.

“In the party example, a straightforward way out of the trap would be to hear from someone else who knows the person you are currently avoiding, who tells you they are actually quite nice!” says Prof. Hayes.