The Intuitive Traditionalist

CHAPTER TWO

The Intuitive Traditionalist: How Biases for Existence and Longevity Promote the Status Quo Scott Eidelman*, Christian S. Crandall†

*Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA † Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA

Contents 1. Introduction 2. Existence and Longevity Biases in History 2.1 Hume and the is-ought problem 2.2 Burke and the wisdom of the ages 2.3 Intuitions of goodness and rightness from precedent 3. Other Causes of Status Quo Preference 3.1 Processes related to experience and exposure 3.2 Processes related to change resistance 3.3 Motivated accounts of status quo defense 3.4 Processes of rational choice 3.5 Summary 4. Evidence for Existence and Longevity Biases 4.1 Is is ought 4.2 Longer is better 5. Direct Evidence for Heuristic Processing 5.1 Overapplication 5.2 Efficiency 5.3 Lack of awareness 5.4 Intuitive 5.5 Systematic processing moderates existence bias 6. Attributional Underpinnings of Existence and Longevity Biases 6.1 Overreliance on inherent features 6.2 Inherent features are first 6.3 The antagonism of time 6.4 Rendering external forces salient 7. Automatic Thinking, Status Quo Preference, and Conservative Ideology 7.1 Other automatic processes that favor the status quo 7.2 Automatic processing and political conservatism 7.3 Evidence 7.4 Summary Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 50 ISSN 0065-2601 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800284-1.00002-3

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8. Higher Standards for Change 9. Social and Ideological Consequences of Existence and Longevity Biases 9.1 Incumbency effects 9.2 Comformity and social norms 9.3 Justification of inequality 10. The Other Side and the Outer Limits 11. Conclusions Acknowledgments References

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Abstract People tend to like things the way they are. All other things being equal, there is a widespread bias in favor of the status quo. We describe two forms this bias may take: people assume that (1) mere existence makes things good and right (the existence bias) and (2) the longer something is thought to exist, the better and more right it is judged to be (the longevity bias). We take care to distinguish existence and longevity biases from other forms of status quo preference. Our research emphasizes people's automatic, heuristic tendency to ascribe existence and longevity to inherent features. We describe how existence and longevity biases contribute to status quo maintenance and political ideology; we also show how these biases provide novel explanatory power for incumbency effects, social norms, and the legitimization of inequality. We conclude with a consideration of exceptions to what appears to be a general rule: people assume that the status quo is good, right, and the way things ought to be.

1. INTRODUCTION In 2005, several students from the University of Maine shuffled through the sleet and snow to a psychology lab in Orono. After a quick greeting and some formalities, the students were asked their opinions about the University of Maine’s requirements for a college degree. They were told that the university requires 32 semester credits within their major department, and they were considering raising that requirement to 38 (the total number of credits needed in order to graduate would not change). The students did not want the requirements raised; they liked the current requirement more than the alternative. Unbeknownst to these students, sitting next to them in the room were others who were responding to the same task, being asked the same questions, but with one important difference. These students were told that the university requires 38 credits within the major department, and the university was considering lowering that to 32 credits. These students did not want

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the requirements lowered; they, too, expressed a preference for the ways things were, compared to the alternative. The students on that cold winter day were not unique. People in Maine, Arkansas, Kansas, and Quebec have preferred the status quo when the context was changed, when the decision was irrelevant, when concerns about change were absent, and when the judgments were about beauty or tastiness. Our participants demonstrated the existence bias, the tendency to assume that existing states of the world are good and right, to treat the ways things are as the way things ought to be (Eidelman, Crandall, & Pattershall, 2009). A corollary longevity bias describes the tendency to assume that longstanding states of the world are good and right; longer existence is better (Eidelman, Pattershall, & Crandall, 2010). These biases are quick, intuitive judgments that stem from heuristic processing; perceivers assume the goodness and rightness of the status quo. We detail existence and longevity biases in the sections that follow, differentiating them from cousins in the status quo preference family, while providing direct evidence for a heuristic processing account. We then explore the attributional underpinnings of these biases, as well as their connections to ideology and other outcomes of consequence. We also consider exceptions and whether these biases are for good or bad. But first we begin with some history.

2. EXISTENCE AND LONGEVITY BIASES IN HISTORY Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. —John Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn

In his ode, Keats’ narrator treats truth (what is) and beauty (what is good) as interchangeable in the experience of art. There are many examples of the conflation of existence with goodness in philosophy, economics, law, and aesthetics as well. Our starting point is two sources with opposing views on many things, but with one unlikely area of agreement. As political philosophers, David Hume and Edmund Burke did not agree about human nature, ethical foundations, or even politics, yet they seem to have been of like mind when it came to why people value existing states of the world. They observed that people’s preference for what exists and is established is a quick, gut-level response, unmediated by reason. For Hume, this was an error and a vice; for Burke, this was a virtue to be ignored or overridden

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only at our peril. We begin with a longer than usual philosophical and historical review, because it puts the scientific and practical issues in high relief.

2.1. Hume and the is-ought problem In the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume (1739/1888) introduced the is-ought problem. He was criticizing other ethicists for their habit of confusing descriptions of the world-as-it-is with prescriptions for the world-as-itought-to-be. He suggested that these were not one and the same, and that the careless connections made between “is” and “ought” should be severed (this became “Hume’s Guillotine”; Black, 1964).1 In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning . . . when all of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. . .. for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. . .. I am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason (Hume, 1739/1888, p. 469)

The “is/ought” problem, as philosophers now know it, is the practice of deriving an “ought” from an “is.” It can be rendered as the inability to reach prescriptive premises from descriptive conclusions (O’Neil, 1983). According to Hume, the relation of is and ought “should be observed and explained.” His complaint was that arguments often simply state what exists, and then rush headlong into claims of how things should be; they infer moral goodness from mere existence with incomplete or incompetent reasoning (Hudson, 1969). Hume’s is/ought problem is closely related to other philosophical and psychological issues, including the fact-value distinction and ethical naturalism. But it is commonly labeled after another closely related philosophical idea: the naturalistic fallacy. The naturalistic fallacy refers to the tendency to conflate moral goodness with pleasantness or usefulness or some other positive quality (Moore, 1903/2004), without the necessary value judgment that pleasant or useful is somehow ethically good (which may vary by 1

There is a vigorous debate in ethics and moral philosophy about the nature of the is-ought problem, which is beyond the scope of this paper. Although the separation of “is” from “ought” is a typical philosophical position, ethical naturalists argue that moral values must come from the world as it exists. There is a substantial movement among evolutionists for ethical theory based on the “biological facts” of evolution (see Kitcher, 1985, 1994). For more on this issue, see Searle (1964), Black (1964), and Hudson (1969).

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context) (White, 1956). The majority of scientific literature has conflated “naturalistic fallacy” with the is/ought problem (e.g., Friedrich, 2010; Ismail, Martens, Landau, Greenberg, & Weise, 2012; Kohlberg, 1971; cf. Oaksford & Chater, 2011); this represents a difference in terms, but not of concept. People do treat what-is as evidence of what-ought. Friedrich, Kierniesky, and Cardon (1989) presented undergraduates with examples of research findings about advertising of food during children’s television shows, the results of cooperative intergroup classrooms, and autonomy in the workplace. Reading about the research findings lead to the endorsement of “ought” statements, such as “According to this research, companies promoting sugared snack and cereals should be limited in how much they advertise on children’s shows,” “This study shows that school systems should be structured so as to increase liking among different ethnic groups,” and “These findings show that people deserve to have interesting and fulfilling work” (see also Friedrich, 2005; Ismail et al., 2012).

2.2. Burke and the wisdom of the ages The most influential philosophical and political thinker to elevate the moral standing of the status quo was Edmund Burke, often called the “father of modern conservatism” (e.g., Dunn & Woodard, 2003). Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1789/1987) compared contemporary attitudes toward social and political change in England with the then recent (lethal and chaotic) French Revolution (the quotes below come from this source, pp. 76–77). He drew the lesson that social change may sometimes be desirable, but that existing practices and institutions carry in them the wisdom and experience of the ages. For Burke, our longstanding attitudes, beliefs, and support for existing institutions (which he labeled, nonpejoratively, as “prejudices”) represent an honest affection for effective practice: Instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and . . . we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. Burke (1789/1987, p. 76)

Suspicious as he was of the Enlightenment, Burke did not value cold judgment and skeptical reasoning. Instead, he argued, status quo and tradition are the best source of guidance over the community’s practices; traditions represent accumulated collective wisdom:

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We are afraid to put men [sic] to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages . . . [rather] than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence.

To complete our review of Burke’s argument in favor of promoting the status quo, we raise one more relevant point. For Burke, preserving the status quo and following accepted practice had another substantial practical benefit—it served as a heuristic guide for making judgment and decisions: Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not just a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

2.3. Intuitions of goodness and rightness from precedent Hume and Burke have in common the assertion that people intuit the goodness of what is already established; people simply assume the goodness and rightness of existing and longstanding states of the world. They made their observations in the context of ethics and political thinking, respectively, but we now know these tendencies apply to social judgment much more broadly. We have used the term existence bias to describe the process by which people assume that existing states of the world are good and right (Eidelman et al., 2009). Its corollary, longevity bias, describes the processes by which people assume what has existed for longer is better (Eidelman et al., 2010). These biases are intuitive judgments that result from heuristic processing; people have an immediate favorable response to what is established, a response that could be overridden with time, reflection, motivation, and the like. Our thinking places these biases in line with the correspondence bias (Gilbert & Malone, 1995) and outcome bias (Allison, Mackie, & Messick, 1996) literatures, and more generally within the dual-process approach common in social psychology (e.g., Chaiken & Trope, 1999). This approach is also consistent with current thinking about heuristic processing (Kahneman, 2003, 2011). Like Hume and Burke, psychologists differ in their opinions about the costs and benefits of heuristic thinking (e.g., Gigerenzer, 2004; Kahneman, 2003). We take neither side; our only goal is to show what people do.

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Before discussing these ideas in detail, it is essential to distinguish existence and longevity biases from other processes that promote the status quo. As we describe below, our conceptualization of existence and longevity biases provides a sharp contrast with other forms of status quo preference (Eidelman & Crandall, 2009).

3. OTHER CAUSES OF STATUS QUO PREFERENCE 3.1. Processes related to experience and exposure Mere exposure (Zajonc, 1968) and the “truth effect” (Arkes, Boehm, & Xu, 1991; Bacon, 1979; Hasher, Goldstein, & Toppino, 1977) are related processes that favor the status quo; repetition over time increases liking for stimuli (in the case of mere exposure; see Bornstein, 1989; Harrison, 1977) or perceptions of validity and truth (in the case of truth effects; see Dechene, Stahl, Hansen, & Wanke, 2010). Because the status quo is more likely to be familiar and repeated, it will be judged as more favorable and credible. Although the mechanisms underlying these effects may differ— mere exposure effects may be due to conditioning (Zajonc, 2001) or processing fluency (e.g., Jacoby & Kelley, 1990), truth effects may be due to familiarity or source variability (e.g., Roggeveen & Johar, 2002), ultimately both stem from repetition. In contrast, existence and longevity biases represent people’s assumptions about the goodness and rightness of existing and longstanding states of the world; repeated exposure to a stimulus over time is unnecessary for these biases to emerge.

3.2. Processes related to change resistance Existence and longevity biases describe an intuitive, heuristic process that favors the status quo; people equate existence and persistence with goodness. This process is distinct from perspectives that highlight concerns associated with change. People may be fearful of the unknown, or otherwise equate “what could be” with “bad” (e.g., neophobia). They also give more weight to potential losses than to equal gains (they are “loss averse,” Tversky & Kahneman, 1991). Because the status quo operates as a reference point from which change is considered, the costs of change should carry more weight than potential benefits, creating a relative advantage for the existing state of affairs (Moshinsky & Bar-Hillel, 2010). This aversion to risk and loss leads to greater regret for action than for inaction (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982), and more regret is experienced when a

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decision changes the status quo than when it maintains it (Hesketh, 1996; Ritov & Baron, 1992; cf. Inman & Zeelenberg, 2002). As a result, people may prefer to do nothing (i.e., omission bias; Ritov & Baron, 1992; Spranca, Minsk, & Baron, 1991) and/or maintain the status quo (i.e., status quo bias; Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988). These “do nothing” and “status quo maintenance” effects in decision making are grounded in loss aversion and regret avoidance (Anderson, 2003; Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991; Moshinsky & Bar-Hillel, 2010) and therefore are distinct from a heuristic processing account.

3.3. Motivated accounts of status quo defense Other perspectives detail goal-oriented means to status quo maintenance, whereby people are motivated to justify and defend the status quo. The status quo may manifest as the result of a personal decision (Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988), and these decisions are rationalized (e.g., Brehm, 1956). People also rationalize their expectations about the future (Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002). Because people wish to see the world as a just place where people get what they deserve and deserve what they get (Lerner, 1980), victims of misfortune are often derogated to explain otherwise inexplicable suffering ( Jones & Aronson, 1973; Lerner & Miller, 1978); this derogation short circuits attempts to change the status quo to prevent future victims. System justification theory maintains that people are motivated to defend existing social arrangements more generally ( Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004). Several findings provide strong evidence that people are motivated to see these arrangements as good, just, and legitimate. For example, when the social system is threatened (e.g., when one’s home country is criticized by an outsider), or when inescapability of the social system becomes apparent (e.g., participants are told emigration from their country is becoming increasingly difficult), justification of the social system increases (Kay et al., 2009). These motivations to justify and defend the status quo are well established. They may combine with existence and longevity biases to affect judgments and bias decision making (e.g., Blanchar & Eidelman, 2013), but they are conceptually and empirically distinct from our heuristic processing account. We posit no particular goal that social perceivers are trying to reach; people simply assume existence is good, and longer existence is better.

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3.4. Processes of rational choice Our heuristic account also contrasts with potentially rational accounts for status quo preference. Positive evaluation of the status quo may be a reasoned and reasonable judgment; deliberating over arguments and evidence may lead to the conclusion that the status quo is genuinely superior to other alternatives. Once a choice has been made, and there is no change in preference or choice set, there should be no shift from the status quo (indeed, it would be irrational to do so). Transaction costs may also impede change. Institutions, rules, customs, and habits may not be ideal, but changing them could be costly in terms of time, money, and/or effort. The cognitive costs of decision making may be too high as well. Choice can be difficult (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Schwartz, 2000), and decision makers may prefer to do nothing (Ritov & Baron, 1990) and/or to maintain their current course of action (Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988) because it is easier. In addition to the cognitive limitations imposed by choice, there are also informational limitations. Decision outcomes are rarely certain, nor is the utility they may bring. Because some errors are more costly than others (Friedrich, 1993; Haselton & Nettle, 2006), sticking with what worked in the past is a safe option that makes for a smart choice. As long as previous decisions are “good enough” (Simon, 1956), an energy-conserving organism in an uncertain world has little impetus to change; in this case, “satisficing” may be the rational thing to do (Schwartz, Ben-Haim, & Dacso, 2011).

3.5. Summary The preference for the status quo is bolstered by many processes. We have experience with it and exposure to it, its successes are available to us, it is easy to think about, and it entails no costs of change. The status quo does not normally present obvious opportunities lost, its maintenance does not manufacture regret, and it supports the illusion of fairness and justifies itself. But we make one further claim—that people are prepared to imbue the status quo with an unearned quality of goodness, in the absence of deliberative thought, actual experience, or reason to do so.

4. EVIDENCE FOR EXISTENCE AND LONGEVITY BIASES 4.1. Is is ought Our first goal was to establish evidence for an existence bias—that people assume existing states of the world are good and right. This assumption

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should be distinguishable from the effects of exposure and contact, concerns about change, motivations to rationalize, and reasoned inference. Our strategy was to compare procedures, objects, and other stimuli that differed only in the extent to which they represented existence (i.e., the status quo). In the study described at the very beginning of this chapter, students considered degree requirements at their university (Eidelman et al., 2009, Study 2). Some were told the current rule required them to complete 32 credit hours within their major, and there was a proposal to change the rule to 38 credit hours. Others were told the opposite that 38 credit hours represented the status quo, and the proposal was to change to 32. After reading brief arguments for each side, they evaluated the options. The status quo version was judged as better—more good, right, and the way things ought to be—compared to the identical requirement presented as an alternative, and this held regardless of which option was described as the status quo (for a systematic replication, see McKelvie, 2013). The same pattern was found in the context of a company considering the relocation of their corporate headquarters from one city to another (Eidelman et al., 2009, Study 1); participants preferred the current location over the alternative, irrespective of which option represented the status quo. Because in these studies the status quo was determined randomly (and in both cases the options were fabrications), previous exposure cannot account for these data. Still, people may stick with the status quo because change can have costs, risk, and loss. We sought to demonstrate an existence bias independent of these concerns—by holding change constant across options. To show that people value the status quo regardless of the costs associated with change, we created a scenario about the future, manipulated its likelihood, and measured how good and right that outcome would be (Eidelman et al., 2009, Study 3). Early in the 2008 Democratic primary for President of the United States, then-Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were in a close and lively competition for the opportunity to represent the Democratic Party. We manipulated the likelihood that either Obama or Clinton would win the primary by randomly assigning participants to imagine vividly that either Obama or Clinton won the nomination. Imagining an outcome makes it seem more likely (Anderson, 1983; Carroll, 1978), and we conceptualized likelihood as a “future status quo.” We predicted that imagining an outcome would also make it better, and this is what we found. Imagining Clinton or Obama winning the primary increased likelihood estimates of that candidate winning, but also that win’s goodness and rightness. The increased

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likelihood mediated the relation between imagining and evaluation— imagining one of the candidates winning made it seem more likely, and this in turn increased participants’ sense that Obama (or Clinton) winning the nomination was good, right, and the way things ought to be. Because the current president at the time (George W. Bush) was a second-term Republican unable to run for re-election, Obama and Clinton equally represented change from the status quo (at the time we ran the experiment). In these experiments, we presented participants with choices, and in each of them, the participants might easily have been led to create rational arguments that support a pro-status quo conclusion (e.g., for the deeper knowledge that 38 credits within a major brings or for the broader experience of a candidate like Clinton over Obama). So we switched to aesthetics and judgments of beauty—evaluations that, for amateur observers, have little reasoning or argument attached to them. We also need to know that the existence bias is more than a choice phenomenon. To do this, we showed a new group of participants a picture of a “galaxy,” which we defined as a cluster of stars, gas, and dust held together by mutual gravitational attraction, but in fact was a set of random data points connected by a smooth line (Eidelman et al., 2009, Study 4). They were told 40%, 60%, or 80% of galaxies took the form of the one shown and rated the galaxy for its aesthetic qualities. As rate of existence increased, so too did the galaxy’s beauty (see Figure 2.1). This was a between-participants task and completely absent 7

Aesthetic evaluation

6 5 4 3 2 1 40% Likelihood

60% Likelihood

80% Likelihood

Figure 2.1 Aesthetic evaluation of an alleged galaxy as a function of the likelihood that the form is found in nature. From Eidelman et al. (2009). Adapted with permission.

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of choice; this is not loss aversion, nor is it regret avoidance. There was no need for justice or system justification, and the context offered no need for rationalization. None of our participants had any experience with the galaxy they were shown (a fabrication based on an Excel spreadsheet), so there were no differences in exposure. What rational inference would explain people’s aesthetic preference for what was a cluster of points described as stars? Here, we have evidence that common modern undergraduates are much like the sophisticated ethicists of Hume’s day: they conflate existence with goodness.

4.2. Longer is better If existence is good, longer existence should be better. Time vets endeavors through testing, competition, and the like; those endeavors that maintain and persist should be judged more favorably for doing so. This thinking resembles quasievolutionary notions of “survival of the fittest” and also the augmentation principle in attribution theory (Kelley, 1972). Do people treat length of existence as evidence of value? Once again, we offered our 32 versus 38 credits for degree problem, counterbalancing which option was described as the status quo (Eidelman et al., 2010, Study 1). This time, we added a second manipulation. Half were told the current requirement had been in existence for 10 years, and the other half were told 100 years. Participants rated the status quo as more good, right, and the way things ought to be, and most importantly, the status quo effect was significantly larger in the 100-year condition than the 10-year condition. Can this phenomenon be pushed far enough to legitimize a practice that over 95% of Americans eschew (Burke, Upchurch, Dye, & Chyu, 2006)? A group of participants were given a brief but accurate description of acupuncture, which then described it as existing for 250, 500, 1000, or 2000 years (Eidelman et al., 2010, Study 2). Figure 2.2 shows the results: the older the practice, the more effective and useful it was thought to be. Longevity made acupuncture seem more effective. Can it justify torture? A representative sample of Americans read a mostly accurate description of “enhanced interrogations” conducted at the behest of the U.S. Government (Crandall, Eidelman, Skitka, & Morgan, 2009). Some were told these techniques had been used for four decades; others were told their use was new. The “longstanding” techniques garnered more support and justification, even though people equally labeled the techniques as torture whether old or new.

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6.5

Evaluation

6

5.5

5

4.5 250 Years

500 Years

1000 Years

2000 Years

Figure 2.2 Evaluation of acupuncture as a function of time in existence. From Eidelman et al. (2010). Adapted with permission.

The legitimacy conferred to longevity extends to a wide range of outcomes: religions, conspiracy theories, cultural myths, and pseudoscientific practices are seen as more valid, credible, and true when thought to exist for a longer period of time2 (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2014a). Warner and Kiddoo (2014) asked their participants to consider the Mormon religion, manipulated to be perceived as relatively old (“The Book of Mormon contains passages written by ancient prophets, beginning in approximately 2200 BC”) or new (“The Book of Mormon was discovered and translated by Joseph Smith in 1823”). Participants who were led to think the Mormon faith was older reported less prejudice toward this group, an effect that was driven by corresponding changes in perceptions of the faith’s legitimacy. This bias is not simply a matter of ratiocination or rationalization; it extends to sensory experience, beyond reasonable inference or easy justification. In a faux marketing study, we (Eidelman et al., 2009, Study 5) had students taste one of two soft drinks: either a good-tasting on-the-market root beer or a less sweet and noticeably bitter drink (Moxie). Prior to tasting, students were told it had been on the market since 1903 or 2003. For both 2

The debater or philosophically minded will recognize this as a generalization of the argumentum ad antiquitatem, the appeal to tradition (e.g., Risen, Gilovich, Sternberg, Halpern, & Roediger, 2007).

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the tasty or not-so-tasty drink, the older beverage was preferred to its more recent—but otherwise identical—counterpart. Longevity can make a distasteful drink delicious, a bitter beverage better, and a sickening soda succulent.

5. DIRECT EVIDENCE FOR HEURISTIC PROCESSING So far, we have been ruling out alternatives to the heuristic account of existence and longevity biases. This is the “last person standing” strategy, and it is rather weak unless we also provide evidence in favor of the heuristic account. Here now is some of this positive evidence.

5.1. Overapplication Heuristics are often useful, providing “good enough” answers most of the time. If you want to know how often an event occurs or how probable is its occurrence, the ease with which instances come to mind may be a reliable cue (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). If you are trying to determine whether an object is of good quality, knowing how much effort was spent producing it may be a useful guide (Kruger, Wirtz, Van Boven, & Altermatt, 2004). But rules of thumb can also lead people astray when they are overgeneralized to contexts in which they do not apply; overapplication and misapplication are common features of heuristic thinking. Knowing that something represents the status quo may be a reasonable indicator of goodness or rightness, but the application of this principle is overgeneralized to dimensions uncorrelated with existence and persistence. Two of the studies mentioned previously provide cases in point: a cluster of stars looked prettier when more prevalent (Eidelman et al., 2009), and a beverage tasted better when on the market longer (Eidelman et al., 2010). We have found the same pattern for other aesthetic and gustatory judgments (Eidelman et al., 2010, Expts. 3–5). In one study, participants judged a print of an obscure expressionist painting after being told the work was made “about 5 years ago” or “about 100 years ago.” The “older” painting was considered more aesthetically pleasing. In another study, participants looked at a photo of Seven Sisters Oak, in fact the largest southern live oak tree, describing it as 500, 1500, or 4500 years old (the correct answer is 1500). As its life lengthened, its beauty increased. Finally, people walking around the University of Arkansas campus were offered a piece of off-brand chocolate. Although the piece they were offered was fresh (and the same in both conditions), the chocolate was described as having been marketed for either

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3 or 73 years. The older recipe was considered tastier, more pleasant, and more desirable for future sampling. In each of these cases, the aesthetic qualities were directly experienced by the participants; the judgment was a matter of taste and required no justification. And in each of these cases, the older, more established the object, the better it was evaluated. Another demonstration of overapplication comes from recent studies designed to test the power of existence bias to explain the advantage political incumbents hold over their rivals (Eidelman, Blanchar, & Crandall, 2014, Study 3). Participants were shown a photograph and brief description of a candidate for Mayor of a town in North Carolina. Half were told the candidate was the current mayor and running for a second term, the others that she was running for mayor for the first time. When the candidate was described as the incumbent, both men and women rated her as more physically attractive and more pleasant to look at.

5.2. Efficiency Heuristics are effort-saving strategies that simplify information processing (Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008; Sherman & Corty, 1984; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974); they should be unaffected by manipulations that undercut deliberate, effortful responding (Ferreira, Garcia-Marques, Sherman, & Sherman, 2006). For example, dual tasking depletes effortful, controlled processing while leaving more automatic, heuristic processing intact (e.g., Brandsta¨tter, Lengfelder, & Gollwitzer, 2001; Heuer, 1996). We asked participants to complete a short packet of questionnaires (Eidelman et al., 2009), including the “credit hours” and “company relocation” materials described earlier. We distracted some participants by having them work simultaneously on an attention grabbing task that required them to track tones (see Skitka, Mullen, Griffin, Hutchinson, & Chamberlin, 2002). Participants again preferred an existing credit requirement and current location of a company’s headquarters to their equivalent alternative. But cognitive load had no effect on participants’ tendency to favor existence. The participants who tracked tones reported being significantly more distracted than those who did not, but their different levels of attentional resources had no effect on the existence bias, implying that it results from a simple and efficient process.

5.3. Lack of awareness Another feature of heuristic processing is its opacity. People seem largely unaware of the processes that undergird their use of heuristics and the

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intuitions on which they are based; they simply “know without knowing” (Kahneman, 2011; Myers, 2004). We are not suggesting that people are blind to the appeal of existence and longevity as arguments for goodness or rightness or the potential impact of these factors on their own judgment. Burke urged his readers to respect the products of time, and many do so consciously. Experience is a likely source of perceivers’ assumptions about the goodness and rightness of existing and longstanding states, and we can easily imagine our participants drawing on this experience when telling us that a company is better because it has lasted or that a politician is more desirable because she has already been elected and served time in office. When existence and longevity provide meaningful explanations for goodness and rightness, people should articulate as much. But when seemingly unrelated, we expect perceivers to be unaware of the potential influence of existence and longevity on their judgments of positivity and therefore unable to report this influence (e.g., Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Consider the chocolate study mentioned above. Participants reported that the same chocolate tasted better when it was said to have been on the market for a longer period of time. In this study, participants were also asked about the reasons for their judgment. They were given a list of five potential reasons, including time on the market, and asked to rate each as an explanation for their evaluation of the chocolate. Time in existence was rated the least important of all possible reasons (e.g., taste, texture, smell), and its endorsement as an explanation did not differ across our manipulation of longevity. Participants were also asked to indicate one or two reasons for their judgment in an open-ended question; no one mentioned the time the chocolate was on the market. A lack of awareness also was found for the reasons behind the incumbent mayor’s beauty in the study reported above. Although incumbency increased evaluations of the candidate’s physical appeal, it did not increase endorsement of time in office as an explanation, and no participant spontaneously mentioned it as a reason for their judgment of the candidate’s beauty.

5.4. Intuitive Heuristics operate intuitively by producing quick answers with little effort (Ferreira et al., 2006; Kahneman, 2003, 2011; Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008). If existence and longevity biases operate as heuristics, they should be meaningfully related to intuitive responding. We tested this claim in a recent study that again used the 32 versus 38 credit hours scenario described above

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(Eidelman, Blanchar, Iefremova-Carson, & Rogers, 2014, Study 1). Participants read about a possible change to degree requirements at their university with the status quo counterbalanced, and both options were evaluated for their goodness and rightness. To gauge intuitive thinking, participants then completed the cognitive reflections test (CRT; Frederick, 2005), which asks three simple questions that each have an intuitive but wrong answer that can be overcome with deliberate thought (e.g., “If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how many minutes would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?”). We summed the number of intuitive responses to form a measure of participants’ propensity to think intuitively. Other competing explanations for an existence bias were also assessed. To gauge proclivity to rationalize the status quo, participants completed individual difference measures of system justification (Kay & Jost, 2003) and belief in a just world (Lipkus, 1991). To address concerns about risk and loss, participants completed a risk aversion scale (Weber, Blais, & Betz, 2002) and answered a question about investing in a risky business proposition (see Desai, Sondak, & Diekmann, 2011). Participants once again preferred the current requirement over the alternative option regardless of which option represented the status quo, and CRT scores alone predicted the existence bias. Judgments about the goodness of existence were not predicted by rationalization or risk aversion but instead by intuitive thinking.

5.5. Systematic processing moderates existence bias The relation between heuristic processing and more deliberate, effortful processing can take different forms (Chen & Chaiken, 1999). Automatic thinking can bring to mind a quick answer to a question or solution to a problem, but some reflection and effort can overcome this initial response (e.g., Devine, 1989; Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988; Frederick, 2005; see Kahneman, 2003, 2011). In order for heuristic processing to be attenuated by deliberate processing, information that is inconsistent with the output of heuristic processing must be uncovered (Chen & Chaiken, 1999; Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991; see also Erber & Fiske, 1984; Neuberg & Fiske, 1987). If heuristic processing normally leads people to assume the goodness and rightness of the status quo, this intuition may be overridden when deliberate, effortful processing discovers evidence to the contrary. A pair of incumbency studies demonstrates the attenuation of existence bias through systematic processing (Eidelman, Blanchar, & Crandall,

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2014, Studies 1–2). In both, we asked participants to consider two candidates for city council, counterbalancing who was said to be the incumbent. We also manipulated the location of the election, either the city in which participants were residing or another far away. This was designed to manipulate relevance, a factor known to increase effortful information processing including attention and elaboration (e.g., Neuberg & Fiske, 1987; Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981). Both studies included the same brief description of the election that differed in only one small way. In the second, we added one sentence about a controversial and unpopular decision made by the city council (implementation of paid parking downtown). All materials were otherwise identical. When there was no mention of the controversial decision, participants showed a strong incumbency effect, irrespective of who the incumbent was or where the election would be held. But when reminded of an unfavorable decision made by the current council, location moderated the existence bias; participants still preferred the incumbent when the election would be in another city, but they had no candidate preference when the election would be in their community (i.e., when systematic processing should have been engaged). If the output of deliberate processing is consistent with the output of heuristic processing, the effects of each should be independent and additive (Chen & Chaiken, 1999; Maheswaran, Mackie, & Chaiken, 1992). Another recent study makes this point by showing that existence bias can be enhanced when it is in line with deliberate thinking, in this case the motivation to obtain a particular outcome (Eidelman, Blanchar, Iefremova-Carson, et al., 2014, Study 2). Participants were asked to consider the relocation of a company’s corporate headquarters, and it was emphasized that the community in which the company was located would benefit. The current and possible locations of the headquarters were counterbalanced, and participants evaluated both options. We also manipulated relevance; for half of the participants, one of the possible locations was the region in which they resided. Participants demonstrated an existence bias when relocation was irrelevant; they preferred the current option to the alternative when their community would not be affected. A very different pattern emerged when participants’ own community was at stake: the existence bias reversed when their community represented the alternative to the status quo, and, consistent with the additive hypothesis, it was enhanced when participants’ community was the current location. Adding incentive to prefer the status quo increased the existence bias.

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6. ATTRIBUTIONAL UNDERPINNINGS OF EXISTENCE AND LONGEVITY BIASES Decades of research support Heider’s (1958) claim that perceivers tend to locate the causes of outcomes in stable, dispositional sources. They initially, quickly, and easily interpret behavior to be the result of corresponding qualities that reside within people (Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Uleman, Newman, & Moskowitz, 1996), while missing, ignoring, or underappreciating situational demands ( Jones & Harris, 1967; Ross, 1977). This tendency is not limited to person perception; a similar process occurs for judgments of groups (Allison & Messick, 1985) and for patterns more generally (Cimpian & Salomon, in press). Social inference is outcome biased; perceivers seem to assume outcomes are caused by requisite outcome-consistent qualities that reside within agents (Allison et al., 1996). These tendencies to treat dispositional and inherent features as causal have been described as automatic (Gilbert et al., 1988) and heuristic (Allison, Worth, & Campbell King, 1990; Cimpian & Salomon, in press), and they are also consistent with current dual-process models of intuitive thinking. Certain features of an event or pattern automatically come to mind at the expense of others that may be important but less salient; these accessible features are then put together to form a coherent story that results in an intuition (Cimpian & Salomon, in press; Kahneman, 2011). This is a quick and efficient process, but its output may be modified or overridden if more deliberate, intentional thinking uncovers evidence that indicates the need to correct the intuition. A similar process may explain existence and longevity biases. Just as perceivers assume that behavior occurs because actors have the requisite abilities to perform the act, so too do they assume existing and longstanding entities have the necessary capacities to survive and persist (in Heider’s, 1958, terms, existing and longstanding entities “can”). These capacities are qualities inherent to the entity that explain its ability to overcome time and its concomitants (e.g., scrutiny, testing, and competition), and include goodness (desirability), rightness (legitimacy), and supporting features that are indicative of, and give weight to, these qualities. This attributional logic is captured by conventional idioms such as “withstanding the test of time” and “only time will tell” and seems to resemble Darwinian natural selection and notions of “survival of the fittest;”

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entities that survive and persist are necessarily better and more legitimate. Of course, this reasoning requires the additional assumption that existence and persistence are not due to forces external to the entity, forces that may be harder to recognize and are often unknowable. If perceivers were to recognize or otherwise become aware of other facilitative forces that could explain existence and persistence, the causal weight of inherent qualities should be downplayed or discounted. In the absence of external features that facilitate existence and persistence, these inherent features should be augmented to account for the opposing forces of time (e.g., Kelley, 1972). If true, we should find evidence that (1) perceivers rely on inherent features when considering longer-standing entities, and (2) this reliance on inherent features is perceivers’ first response. This attention to inherent features should explain corresponding increases in legitimacy. We should also find evidence that (3) persistence leads to assumptions about success over time (e.g., overcoming scrutiny, competitors, and the like) that also explains legitimacy, and (4) rendering alternative, “external” reasons for persistence salient should reduce perceptions of legitimacy. Preliminary evidence supports all of these claims.

6.1. Overreliance on inherent features People assume that longstanding entities are desirable and legitimate. Are these assumptions due to an overreliance on inherent features as the cause of persistence at the expense of explanations external to the entity? We asked a group of participants to consider a brief description of Area 51, a military base in the Nevada desert that some believe to hold evidence of alien visitation (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2014a, Study 2). We manipulated time in existence of the conspiracy theory directly; some were told this theory had been around for about 30 years, others about 90 years. In addition to responding to statements that tapped perceptions of the conspiracy theory’s legitimacy (e.g., “The United States government is hiding evidence that we have been visited by Aliens”), participants were asked in an open-ended question to indicate why they thought conspiracy theories about Area 51 continued to exist. These responses were then coded by blind judges for reasons that verified inherent qualities (e.g., “Because of footage”) or indicated something external to the theory (e.g., “Folklore. . .” and “. . .people want it to be true”). Participants rated the conspiracy theory as more legitimate in the longer time in existence condition and also were significantly more likely to invoke features that indicated inherent qualities that explained

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persistence. This emphasis on inherent features statistically mediated the effect of longevity on legitimacy: persistence across time provided evidence of inherent qualities, and these qualities enhanced belief.

6.2. Inherent features are first But do inherent features come to mind first, as models of attribution and automatic, heuristic processing suggest (e.g., Cimpian & Salomon, in press; Gilbert et al., 1988)? We had participants read about the legend of the Yeti of Nepal—also known as the Abominable Snowman, an ape-like creature that supposedly inhabits the Himalayan Mountains (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2014a, Study 3). Some were told that stories about the creature had been around for less than 25 years, others that the stories had been around for over 125 years. Participants were then asked to come up with a reason for why this legend persisted. Half were asked for the first reason that came to mind, the rest were told: “Don’t give the first reason that comes to mind. Instead, consider all of the relevant factors and then give a reason after you have thought hard about why this legend continues to exist.” This simple manipulation had a marked effect. When participants indicated the first reason that came to mind, they rated the “older” legend to be more legitimate; but when deliberation came before writing out a reason, this pattern reversed. Instruction to give one’s first reason also resulted in more “inherent” explanations in the 125-year condition than the 25-year condition, and these reasons once again mediated the relation between time in existence and legitimacy.

6.3. The antagonism of time Time is antagonistic to survival; it challenges existence by inviting scrutiny, testing, vetting, and competitors, all factors that may be taken into account so that perceivers augment the goodness and rightness of entities that overcome it. Here, the attributional logic resembles Darwinian natural selection and “survival of the fittest.” Overcoming time is evidence of success, and so longstanding entities are necessarily better. Are assumptions about the counterforces of time a critical agent in generating longevity bias? In one study, we gave participants the Yeti of Nepal materials and then manipulated the time of the legend’s existence with a timeline (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2014a, Study 4). Participants were presented with a dateless timeline containing important events and the rightmost endpoint labeled “present day.” Participants in the “long time in existence” condition saw “First Yeti Sighting” positioned at the left-most

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end of the timeline, furthest from present day (and with eight events in between). In the “short time in existence” condition, “First Yeti Sighting” was placed at the far right of the timeline, adjacent to present day (and with eight events preceding it; a manipulation check confirmed the effectiveness of this manipulation). Participants then responded to questions about the myth’s legitimacy and also its withstanding of the tests of time (e.g., “Belief in the Yeti has had to beat out other explanations for sightings of an ape-like creature in the Himalayans,” and “Belief in Yeti creatures has overcome scrutiny”). In another study, participants read about eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, a controversial psychotherapy used to treat trauma-related illness (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2014a, Study 5). Some were told EMDR therapy had been around for 15 years, others 75 years. Participants answered questions about EMDR’s legitimacy and also its withstanding of the tests of time (e.g., “There have been many tests of EMDR”). Findings from both studies were consistent with predictions. Participants found the older Yeti legend and eye movement therapy to be more legitimate than its relatively younger but otherwise identical counterpart. The older entity was also more likely to have overcome the tests of time (to have been scrutinized, tested, and to have beat competitors), and perceptions of having been time-tested mediated the relation between time in existence and perceived legitimacy.

6.4. Rendering external forces salient Longevity bias is based, in part, on the attribution of longevity to inherent qualities. In this way, it resembles the fundamental attribution error/correspondence bias (Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Ross, 1977). People have difficulty identifying situational factors that facilitate outcomes (e.g., Miller, Mayerson, Pogue, & Whitehouse, 1977) and an inability to recognize this type of information prevents the possibility of correcting for it (Gilbert & Malone, 1995; Trope & Gaunt, 2000). Unless perceivers are aware of relevant situational constraints ( Jones, 1979; Miller et al., 1977), and able and willing to correct for them (Gilbert et al., 1988), attribution to inherent qualities may be unavoidable. This means that perceivers are likely to underappreciate situational forces that encourage survival of entities beyond what is due to their inherent qualities. In terms that speak to notions of natural selection, perceivers may underappreciate the role of “artificial selection” forces (e.g., success due to the intentions of those with vested interests) in maintaining these long-standing entities.

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Does evidence of unnatural selection undo longevity bias? Participants came to the lab for a “study of personality” (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2014a, Study 6). They were seated alone in front of a computer and told that they would be asked for personal information to be used by a computer program to provide feedback based on astrological charts. Participants then read a short description of astrology, followed by a dateless timeline that was varied to portray astrology as relatively new or old. A third condition, also portraying astrology as relative old, added additional information that highlighted circumstances of artificial selection. Participants read that “. . .newspapers have learned that printing horoscopes significantly increase their sales and astrologers read horoscopes and sell books to earn profits. . .Many have suggested that astrology has persisted only because of the financial interest of its promoters.” Participants then responded to some items to measure perceived legitimacy (e.g., “Astrology is a legitimate field of study”) before answering several questions said to be used to calculate a personality profile. They indicated information such as their date and approximate time of birth and the hemisphere in which they were born, before the computer program seemingly generated a personality profile. In reality, all participants received the same bogus, mostly positive personality profile used in classic research on the Barnum effect (Forer, 1949). Participants then rated the validity of this feedback. Once again participants conferred legitimacy from longevity. Both astrology and a personality profile believed to be generated by this method were seen as more valid and credible when a timeline depicted astrology as older. However, when participants were told that the vested interest of others could contribute to astrology’s persistence, legitimacy judgments were reduced to those in the astrology is relatively new condition.

7. AUTOMATIC THINKING, STATUS QUO PREFERENCE, AND CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY Existence and longevity biases are only two examples of how quick and efficient thinking may promote the status quo; several additional processes that favor existing states have features that can be described as intuitive (e.g., quick, effortless; Kahneman, 2003, 2011), heuristic (e.g., implicit, spontaneous; Frederick, 2002; Kahneman, 2011), or automatic (e.g., efficient, unintentional, unconscious; Bargh, 1994; Moors & De Houwer, 2006). In this section, we review some of these processes and demonstrate an important social consequence: automatic, heuristic processing is not

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ideologically neutral but instead seems to favor political conservatism; perceivers’ first, quick response seems to make The Right “right.”

7.1. Other automatic processes that favor the status quo People should be exposed to the status quo more often than other alternatives, and they should like it more due to exposure (Zajonc, 1968). Exposure effects are found when presented stimuli are subliminal (Bornstein, Leone, & Galley, 1987; Kunst-Wilson & Zajonc, 1980; Seamon, Brody, & Kauff, 1983; Seamon, Marsh, & Brody, 1984) or supraliminal and incidental (e.g., Moreland & Zajonc, 1977; Wilson, 1979). In fact, exposure effects are strongest when stimuli are presented outside of awareness (Bornstein, 1989; Bornstein & D’Agostino, 1992). The related “truth effect,” also due to repeated exposure, should increase the validity and veracity of the status quo. Truth effects are stronger when thinking proceeds superficially (Dechene et al., 2010). The status quo typically precedes other alternatives. Perceivers overweigh what comes first when information is processed heuristically (Freund, Kruglanski, & Schpitzajzen, 1985; Heaton & Kruglanski, 1991; Tetlock, 1983; Ybarra, Schaberg, & Keiper, 1999). First options are also evaluated more favorably, but only when conscious thinking is circumvented so that more automatic thinking is relied upon (Carney & Banaji, 2012). People prefer status quo options (Moshinsky & Bar-Hillel, 2010), and this preference increases as a function of the number of alternatives to choose among (Kempf & Ruenzi, 2006; Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988). Relying on the status quo seems to make decision making easier; it is a simple and efficient strategy. People also rationalize the status quo, whether chosen or imposed, when effort, awareness, and intent are at a minimum. For example, people justify their decisions when they are unable to remember their choices (e.g., when participants have anterograde amnesia; Lieberman, Ochsner, Gilbert, & Schacter, 2001; see also Coppin, Delplanque, Cayeux, Porcherot, & Sander, 2010), and members of low status groups rationalize their disadvantage, but only when implicit attitudes are measured ( Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2002; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002; Rudman, Feinberg, & Fairchild, 2002; see Jost et al., 2004).

7.2. Automatic processing and political conservatism The above processes all generate a pro-status quo bias, and all are favored by forms of automatic processing (Eidelman & Crandall, 2009). Preference for

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the status quo is a core component of conservative ideology. Edmund Burke, the parent figure of modern-day conservatism, explicitly recommended deference to tradition, and political scientists and political psychologists have made the connection between status quo preference and political conservatism (Bobbio, 1996; Jost, Glasser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; McClosky & Zaller, 1984; Stone, 1994). Because status quo preference is relatively automatic, conservative ideology may share this advantage; it should require less effort, awareness, and intention to endorse conservative ideas and values.3 There are other reasons why low-effort thought and political conservatism might be linked. Conservative concepts may be simpler and easier to understand, and they may be endorsed more because of the evaluative advantage afforded to processing fluency (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009). It is also possible that automatic thinking and conservatism are causally linked but in the opposite direction; conservatives have been found to think in less complex ways (e.g., Tetlock, 1983; see Jost et al., 2003, for a review), and this could account for a positive relation between quick and simple information processing and conservative attitudes. Our claim is different. We maintain that quick and simple information processing promotes the ideological content of political conservatism, of which status quo preference is central. We have argued for the presence of heuristic processing that favors the status quo and longevity, and for several additional forms of status quo preference to result from thinking that is quick, simple, and efficient. In the absence of more deliberate, effortful thinking that might modify or overcome these tendencies, status quo preference— and other proconservative outputs (see Footnote 3)—should prevail. If made to rely on more automatic, intuitive thinking, people will come to endorse values, decisions, and positions consistent with conservative ideology more, based in part on endorsement of the status quo.

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The case becomes stronger when it is recognized that other dimensions of conservative ideology are also favored by quick and simple thinking. For example, conservative ideology emphasizes self-reliance and personal responsibility (Skitka & Tetlock, 1992, 1993), acceptance of hierarchy (Bobbio, 1996; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Jost et al., 2003; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994), and ingroup loyalty (Graham et al., 2009; Haidt & Graham, 2007), and each seems to have an automatic component. Perceivers automatically judge others as responsible for their behavior (Gilbert et al., 1988), and code these behavior in terms of traits without intention or awareness of doing so (Uleman et al., 1996; Winter & Uleman, 1984); status distinctions are discerned quickly (Moors & De Houwer, 2005), and hierarchical arrangements are easier to perceive, which in turn increases liking for hierarchy (Zitek & Tiedens, 2012); and ingroup loyalty has been described as intuitive (Graham et al., 2009), and ingroup favoritism automatically occurs when group identity is made salient (e.g., Otten & Moskowitz, 2000; Otten & Wentura, 1999).

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The motivated social cognition approach argues that the endorsement of political conservatism is driven by needs to manage threat and uncertainty and that the stability, predictability, and certainty attached to conservative political concepts like the status quo are well suited to address these needs (Chirumbolo, Areni, & Sensales, 2004; Jost et al., 2003, 2007). This account emphasizes how conservative concepts satisfy epistemic and security needs. In contrast, we argue that conservative ideology arises as a process consequence of automatic thinking. Automatic processing may be accessed and used independent of needs for stability and certainty; our account is that quick and simple thought alone will promote political conservatism.

7.3. Evidence The theory we have reviewed suggests that interfering with deliberative thinking will shift people’s attitudes in a conservative direction. We set out to test this hypothesis with a series of studies that increased participants’ reliance on heuristic, nondeliberative thinking. In one, participants reported their extent of agreement with statements that measured political conservatism and liberalism separately (Kerlinger, 1984). Half of the participants simply filled out the questionnaires; the other half gave their responses while working on a second task concurrently, in order to force reliance on simple, efficient thinking (e.g., Gilbert et al., 1988; Skitka et al., 2002; Wegner & Erber, 1992). Endorsement of conservative attitudes increased under cognitive load, and endorsement of liberal attitudes decreased (Eidelman, Crandall, Goodman, & Blanchar, 2012, Study 2). In another study (Eidelman et al., 2012, Study 3), we tested the same hypothesis by manipulating time pressure, which also forces responses that are quick and efficient (e.g., Bargh & Thein, 1985; Strack, Erber, & Wicklund, 1982; Wegner & Erber, 1992). Participants indicated the extent to which they agreed with words and phrases that measured liberal (e.g., civil rights, social change) and conservative (e.g., authority, private property) ideology; these terms appeared one at a time on a computer screen. Those under high time pressure saw each term for about 500 ms, before being given another second to indicate how they felt about it. Those in the low time pressure condition saw each term for four full seconds before they could indicate their opinion. Participants under time pressure endorsed conservatism more, and this time liberalism was unaffected (see also Hansson, Keating, & Terry, 1974). These findings were not due to conservative ideology being easier to understand or process; conservative and liberal stimuli in these studies did

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not differ in reading difficulty, reports of how easy or difficult the concepts underlying these stimuli were to understand, or how long it took participants to respond to them. Load and time pressure increase reliance on simple and easy mental processes, and these processes seemed to promote political conservatism. But cognitive load and time pressure also increase needs for closure (Ford & Kruglanski, 1995; Heaton & Kruglanski, 1991; Kruglanski & Freund, 1983). If political conservatism provides stability and certainty ( Jost et al., 2003), its increased endorsement in our studies could have been due to corresponding increases in epistemic motivation rather than mere processing efficiency. We addressed this alternative account head-on (Eidelman et al., 2012, Study 4). Participants were asked to endorse words and phrases representing political conservatism and political liberalism. We manipulated simple, automatic thinking as directly as possible: some were asked to think hard and really consider each term before responding, whereas others were instructed to go quickly and give their first impression. After making these endorsements, participants completed measures of needs for closure and structure—to account for possible changes in epistemic motivation but also to clear working memory, as they next were given a surprise recognition memory test. Participants were shown a number of ideological words and phrases, of which only about half had been judged previously. Accuracy on this memory test served as a proxy for effortful processing during the previous endorsement task (Craik & Tulving, 1975). As shown in Figure 2.3, participants who were instructed to think lightly endorsed political conservatism more than those who were instructed to think hard (political liberalism was unaffected by this manipulation). Those instructed to use low-effort thinking also made more errors on the recognition memory test than those instructed to cogitate, and recognition accuracy—our gauge of shallow thinking—significantly mediated the link between processing style and conservatism. Needs for closure and certainty were unaffected by our manipulation of processing style and uncorrelated with political conservatism. These data strongly suggest that shifts in motivation are not accounting for the shifts in ideological endorsement we observe. Low-effort thinking can increase the endorsement of political conservatism independent of epistemic needs. In a recent study, we went further and measured participants’ implicit ideological preferences (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2014b, Study 2). Implicit responding is relatively automatic—less intentional, less controllable, and

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6.5 Conservatism Liberalism Political attitudes

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5.5

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4.5 High-effort thought

Low-effort thought

Figure 2.3 Endorsement of Political Conservatism and Political Liberalism as a Function of Effortful Processing. From Eidelman et al. (2012). Adapted with permission.

less resource dependent—than explicit responding (Gawronski & De Houwer, 2014); finding that implicit attitudes favor conservative ideology would indicate that the automatic advantage of political conservatism extends beyond efficiency. Because these automatic processes are preintentional and less controllable, even those who espouse explicit liberalism should indicate an implicit preference for political conservatism. Participants completed one of two versions of an Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) that assessed preference for values associated with political liberalism (e.g., labor unions, social change) and conservatism (e.g., law and order, free markets). These values were paired with pleasant and unpleasant categories. Implicit measures are not process pure; they capture a mix of automatic and controlled processing. To constrain controlled processing even more, half of the participants were forced to respond within a narrow response window (about 500 ms; see Conrey, Sherman, Gawronski, Hugenberg, & Groom, 2005). Compared to normal IAT instructions, this condition was designed to elicit processing that was even less intentional and controllable. There was a general implicit bias for political conservatism across participants, even though the full range of liberal-conservative ideology (measured via explicit self-report) was represented in our sample. We also found an interaction between self-reported ideology and response condition. Explicit ideology predicted implicit ideological preference, but only under normal

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IAT instructions. When forced to respond in a narrow time window, correspondence between explicit and implicit attitudes disappeared. To probe this difference, we used the Johnson-Neyman procedure (see Hayes & Matthes, 2009) to determine at what point, if any, participants’ implicit ideological preference differed between IAT conditions along the extremes of their reported explicit ideology. In the narrow time window condition, those reporting strong explicit liberal ideology indicated a significant increase in implicit conservatism. In contrast, there was no difference in implicit ideology between conditions for participants who were explicitly conservative to any degree. In brief, the implicit attitudes of liberal participants became more like conservatives’ when intentional, controlled responding was severely restricted.

7.4. Summary Automatic thinking favors conservative ideology; it requires less effort, intention, and control to endorse political conservatism. This does not mean that conservatives rely on automatic thinking (concluding this from our data would commit the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent: If A then B 6¼ if B then A (Cheng & Holyoak, 1985; Tidman & Kahane, 2003). And mindful of Hume’s guillotine, we underscore that our use of the term “automatic” is descriptive and carries no value connotation. Put simply, quick and simple thinking promotes the status quo (including existence and longevity biases), and political conservatism as well. In Section 8, we explore another consequence of status quo preference.

8. HIGHER STANDARDS FOR CHANGE Status quo preference has another important consequence; it creates an impediment to the consideration and pursuit of alternatives. Existing and longstanding states benefit not just from the extra value bestowed upon them but also from higher thresholds required for change. Less desirable outcomes are held to higher standards (Ditto & Lopez, 1992; Liberman & Chaiken, 1992). People are also suspicious of change and question those who pursue it (Keltner & Robinson, 1997; Robinson & Keltner, 1996), especially when its instigators come from the margins (O’Brien & Crandall, 2005). Because alternatives to the status quo are valued less and invite distrust, they should undergo more scrutiny and require more evidence before being considered or adopted.

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To test this idea, we asked a group of participants to read one of two versions of the 32/38 credit hours scenario with the status quo counterbalanced (Blanchar, Eidelman, & Allen, 2014, Study 1). Participants reported their relative preference for the two options, but first indicated the number and quality of reasons necessary in order to maintain versus change the status quo (e.g., “I think a number of reasons would be necessary to stick with the existing requirement/change to the proposed requirement”). Consistent with predictions, participants reported that more, better, and stronger reasons were necessary to enact change than to maintain the status quo, irrespective of which option represented the way things were. Participants also rated the status quo as better and more right, and this preference predicted the differential standards set for the status quo and its alternative. A follow-up study (Blanchar et al., 2014, Study 2) used a paradigm loosely based on classic work by Snyder and Swann (1978). A new group of participants read the same tried-and-true credit hours scenario. They were informed that university administrators were seeking input from students and were interested in knowing what questions about the status quo and its alternative students would like answered. A list of 12 questions was provided, and participants were asked to select 5. Half of the full set of questions targeted the status quo, the rest the alternative. The valence of these questions was also varied within subjects, with half framed to elicit positive information about the option (“How will the 32-credit hour option increase students’ breadth of knowledge?”) and the rest framed to elicit negative information (“How will the 38-credit hour option hurt students’ ability to develop greater breadth of knowledge?”). Participants also indicated which option they preferred and which option they thought should be scrutinized more. Participants once again preferred the status quo, and they thought the alternative deserved more scrutiny. Participants did not seek out more information about the status quo (cf. Snyder & Swann, 1978), nor did they simply show a pro-status quo bias by requesting positive information about the status quo and negative information about the alternative. Instead, participants sought out more information, positive and negative, about the alternative. Mediation analyses indicated that this information-seeking about the alternative was due to heightened scrutiny. The more participants liked the status quo, the greater the scrutiny they thought should be applied to the alternative, which in turn led them to select more questions that targeted the alternative. Because both the status quo and its alternative were fabrications, students were equally ignorant of both options. But it was the “new alternative” that they sought to scrutinize.

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Another study combined the methods of the first two by including both question-seeking and standards measures (Blanchar et al., 2014, Study 3). Participants read about two candidates running in a city council election, and we counterbalanced who was described as the incumbent. They indicated their relative preference for the candidates and also selected 5 of 12 questions about the candidates that they were most interested in having answered. Half of these questions targeted the incumbent and half targeted the challenger; half were positively framed and half were negatively framed. Participants also reported standards to which they were holding the candidates (e.g., “Current Councilperson Mike Dever would need to be heavily vetted before sticking with him”). A familiar pattern emerged: participants preferred the incumbent, wanted to ask more questions of the challenger, and reported higher standards for the challenger. Path analyses indicated that status quo (incumbency) preference predicted higher standards for the challenger, and these higher standards accounted for the increased number of questions asked of the challenger. The indirect effect of status quo preference on question selection through raised standards for the challenger was significant and suggests that question selection was in service of heightened scrutiny of the challenger; alternatives are subject to more questioning because they are held to higher standards. High standards are barriers to success (Eidelman & Biernat, 2007), and people work harder to achieve goals when barriers are high—assuming the goal is important and the barrier not too great a deterrent (Brehm & Self, 1989; Wright, Contrada, & Patane, 1986). Because alternatives to the status quo are held to higher standards, people may recognize that they must work harder when they seek change than when they prefer to stay the course. When they pursue a goal that deviates from the status quo, they should expend more effort than when they pursue a goal consistent with the status quo. As an initial test of this idea, we recruited an Internet sample of strongly identified Republicans and Democrats to take part in a study during the 2012 election season (Eidelman & Blanchar, 2014, Study 1). Participants were asked to think about the United States Congress and were randomly assigned to consider their party in charge of either the House of Representatives (where Republicans were the majority at the time data were collected) or the Senate (where Democrats were the majority at the time data were collected). This manipulation ensured that participants from both parties would consider a congressional election where their party was in charge (Republicans considering the House of Representatives or

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Democrats considering the Senate) or not (Republicans considering the Senate or Democrats considering the House of Representatives). All participants were asked how hard it would be for their party to control whichever chamber they were randomly assigned to consider, and how much effort they would be willing to put forth to make this happen. Partisans from both sides of the aisle thought enacting change would be harder than keeping things as they were, and they reported that they would be willing to put forth more effort (e.g., resources, time) for their party to take control of the chamber than to remain the party in control by keeping things as they were. Reported intentions are informative but not always accurate (e.g., LaPiere, 1934; Sheeran, 2002; West & Brown, 1975). Do people in fact work harder to enact change? Undergraduate partisans who identified as either strong Republicans or strong Democrats were recruited to take part in a study about “social views, political engagement, and coordination” that also took place during the 2012 election season (Eidelman & Blanchar, 2014, Study 2). A computer presented information to participants that manipulated which political party was said to hold majority control of the Arkansas State Senate; half were told their own party was the majority, the others were told control was held by the opposing party. Participants were then given the opportunity to work on behalf of their party. They were given a simple number-string task. Seven-digit numbers appeared on the screen one at a time, along with a text box. Participants were told they could enter as many of these number strings as they wished within an imposed 6-min limit, and that for each string correctly entered they would earn one cent for their party. All participants—Republicans and Democrats—worked harder on the task (entered more strings of digits) and therefore raised more money when led to think their party did not control the State Senate than when led to think their party did. Participants worked harder to bring about change than to maintain the status quo.

9. SOCIAL AND IDEOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF EXISTENCE AND LONGEVITY BIASES The preceding two sections have explored consequences of status quo preference in general, and we now return to consider some of existence and longevity biases in particular. We have argued these biases are based on the heuristically processed assumption that existence and longevity provide their own evidence of superiority. The implications of these biases are broad and pervasive. For example, they provide explanations for social and economic

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outcomes, and conflate these outcomes with approval for the existing arrangements. We briefly mention two relevant ideologies: free market capitalism and Social Darwinism. Free market capitalism is based on the notion that prices for goods and services naturally find their appropriate level; guided by the laws of supply and demand, price (what is) reflects value (what should be). Any intervention in the market disturbs the economic system and distorts the natural connections between what is and what ought to be. Market economies result in a better “allocation of societal resources than any design could achieve (Hayek, 1978, pp. 64–65).” When the economy is left to its own devices, what is, is the way things should be. Social Darwinism is a collection of beliefs about how and why some groups are dominant and why they are economically and socially successful. Social Darwinism adopts the biological metaphor of evolution to explain which groups in society are “strong” and which are “weak.” It was for Social Darwinism that the phrase survival of the fittest was coined (Hofstadter, 1955), and it is the circularity of this phrase (the very definition of fitness is survival) that illuminates the equation of what is (some groups are dominant, some are subordinate) with what should be. Treating existing social arrangements, especially dominance hierarchies, as evidence of moral superiority is a fundamental component of eugenics, racism, imperialism, fascism, White supremacy movements, anti-immigration groups, and the like. Not all Social Darwinist thought is racist, and the ideas have been simplified and variously misrepresented (see Bannister, 1989), but the conflation of is and ought in dominance hierarchies is a common component of Social Darwinist thought. We now turn our attention to some additional examples of the connection between is and ought in social and political realms. We revisit some of our findings relating to political incumbents and describe how our heuristic account of status quo preference offers a novel explanation for why previous time in office is advantageous. We then give a heuristic processing account of conformity to social norms. The heuristic account may also provide the impetus to other, downstream forms of status quo preference: we consider the relation between longevity bias and the justification of social inequality.

9.1. Incumbency effects Incumbents tend to be favored in elections at all levels of office (e.g., Ansolabehere & Snyder, 2002; Cover, 1977; Erikson, 1971; Jewell &

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Breaux, 1988; Weisberg, 2002). Typical explanations for why candidates already in office get more votes are institutional: incumbents have access to more resources (Abramowitz, 1991) and can provide goods and services to constituents in exchange for support (Cain, Ferejohn, & Fiorina, 1987; Romero, 2006). They can also take credit for successes, capitalize on polls and publicity (Mayhew, 1974), and learn from experience more generally (Campbell, 2008). There are also several psychological explanations. People are usually more familiar with incumbents (Erikson, 1971); exposure and familiarity increase liking generally (Festinger, Schachter, & Back, 1950; Zajonc, 1968) and vote-getting in particular (Grush, 1980; Grush, McKeough, & Ahlering, 1978; Schaffner & Wandersman, 1974). People are motivated to rationalize existing social arrangements ( Jost et al., 2004), of which winning candidates are an example (Beasley & Josslyn, 2001; Kay et al., 2002). And because people tend to be sensitive to losses (Tversky & Kahneman, 1991), and incumbents represent what is already established, incumbency effects may be driven by concerns associated with change, loss, and risk (Quattrone & Tversky, 1988). Existence and longevity biases offer a novel psychological explanation for incumbency effects: people prefer incumbent candidates because of heuristic processing that favors the status quo. Because they represent what is already established, incumbents are assumed to be good as a simple rule of thumb. Data supporting this heuristic processing account were mentioned earlier. Participants preferred an incumbent city councilperson, unless the election was relevant (i.e., local) and unfavorable information about the current city council was indicated (Eidelman, Blanchar, & Crandall, 2014). The finding that relevance had no effect (Study 1) or eliminated an incumbent advantage (Study 2) is inconsistent with a rationalization account; such an account would predict stronger incumbency preference for a local election because people are more motivated to justify arrangements upon which they are outcome dependent (Kay et al., 2009; Van der Toorn, Tyler, & Jost, 2011). A risk aversion account would also predict a stronger incumbency effect for a local election; in this case, participants would have more to potentially lose. These data are consistent with a heuristic processing account. A local election is more relevant and should increase attention and elaboration (e.g., Neuberg & Fiske, 1987; Petty et al., 1981). This deeper processing should disrupt heuristic processing and override its output when evidence

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is found that is inconsistent with it (e.g., Chen & Chaiken, 1999; Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991), precisely the pattern found when an unpopular decision of the current council was mentioned. A heuristic account is also supported by the physical attraction data described previously: participants found an incumbent mayor to be more attractive and pleasing to look at than her non-status quo counterpart (Eidelman, Blanchar, & Crandall, 2014, Study 3). The output of heuristic processing is often overgeneralized and explains these data well. It is unclear how rationalization or risk aversion, or any of the other explanations for incumbency effects, might account for this finding. Additional data from the first study reported in Eidelman, Blanchar, and Crandall provide even more evidence for a heuristic processing account of incumbency effects. Participants completed individual difference measures of rationalization, risk aversion, and intuitive thinking after reading about a city council election and responding to questions about the candidates. When entered into a regression model, only intuitive thinking was related to a proincumbency bias; participants’ tendency to think lightly and go with their first, intuitive response predicted relative preference for the incumbent. Rationalization and risk aversion accounts were not well supported in these studies. And because the candidates were either made up or unfamiliar to participants, exposure and institutional advantages fail as explanations for our data. Together the findings from these studies offer strong support for heuristic processing to play a unique role in producing incumbency effects; people assume that incumbents are better than alternatives in the absence of any rational evidence.

9.2. Comformity and social norms Existence and longevity biases also offer unique explanatory power for why people conform to social norms. Conformity to norms occurs on the basis of information (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; Sherif, 1936), and it occurs, in part, because groups offer approval and threaten punishment (e.g., Asch, 1956; Crandall, 1988) or provide identity (Turner, 1991). People will conform to norms that are purely descriptive—they will do what others are doing merely because others are doing it (Cialdini, Kallgren, & Reno, 1991). And just as longevity enhances the effects of existence, more people engaging in a behavior may increase the likelihood of conformity (e.g., Latane, 1981; Milgram, Bickman, & Berkowitz, 1969; Wilder, 1977).

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People may follow norms because they conflate ought with is; an existing norm is necessarily good, right, and the way things ought to be, and a longer existing norm is that much better and more credible. This should prove true for descriptive and prescriptive norms (Cialdini et al., 1991), and indeed, the existence bias should render this distinction less meaningful—if a norm exists, then its existence will yield legitimacy, power, and goodness, which implies prescription. If existence and longevity biases apply to social norms, we should be able to demonstrate the impact of status quo on conformity to a norm, even when the psychological processes thought to undergird alternative accounts are held constant or are absent. Just knowing that something represents the status quo should be enough to elicit a change in behavior toward the norm. We tested this idea in a recent study (Eidelman, Blanchar, Sparkman, et al., 2014). Students taking part in an experiment about “glucose and memory” read a passage, knowing that later they would eat some fruit and then try to remember as many of its details as possible. Participants were told they would eat a red banana, and to make the memory passage more interesting, its content would describe a South American tribe who ate the fruit. They read in part that: The Piro tribe lives in the jungles of Peru. This tribe is interesting because it has a culture that revolves around. . .red bananas. . .The Piro have a practice where the young males of the tribe compete to see who can climb red banana trees the fastest and who can get the highest bananas. Many times a year the tribe meets for celebrations and bring with them gifts of red bananas. Giving red bananas as a gift is thought to be a blessing, for the red banana represents life. The tallest red banana trees have the most life and those bananas are worth the most. Giving red bananas away is a way of giving life to people. But with everything good, there is also bad. Like all bananas, the red ones age and turn bad quickly. The Piro believe that there is a good side and a bad side to each red banana. Opening a banana from one of the ends invites the possibility of opening the bad side, a bad omen in the Piro culture. To prevent this, every member of the Piro tribe opens a red banana from the middle by twisting it open. They believe this drives out the bad side of the banana.

A manipulation of how long the Piro have been twisting open bananas from the middle followed. Half of participants were told that the behavior had “only been practiced for a few decades,” the rest were told the behavior “has been practiced for many centuries.” Participants were then given a red banana to eat and a questionnaire to answer before they were debriefed, thanked, and dismissed. A research assistant recovered the banana peel from the trash to determine how the banana was opened.

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Participants were more than twice as likely to twist the banana open from the middle when the tribe’s custom was said to have existed for centuries rather than decades. The banana-opening situation was equally ambiguous, and the Piro tribe equally irrelevant to participants’ own lives, across conditions. Another possibility is that participants inferred more social consensus in the centuries condition; it would be reasonable to think more people follow a custom when it has existed for longer, and more people may translate to greater influence (Latane, 1981). Participants were asked about the behavior of others (e.g., “What percentage of people opens their banana by twisting it open from the middle?”), but there were no differences due to our manipulation or whether participants chose to twist open the banana. And yet the length of the time that a South American tribe followed a custom impacted whether our Southern American participants adopted the behavior.

9.3. Justification of inequality The factors that contribute to the persistence of inequality are many. Of those that turn on psychology, the capacity to rationalize seems paramount. People have a strong penchant for justifying extant social arrangements, including those that are unequal ( Jackman, 1994; Jost et al., 2004; Lerner, 1980; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Existence and longevity biases, and the heuristic processing on which they rest, offer an independent pathway to the justification of inequality: an existing or longer-standing social system, even one that is inequitable, may come to be seen as more justifiable because it is assumed to be more legitimate. In one study (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2013, Study 1), an Internet sample of participants read about the philosophical origins of capitalism as outlined in Adam Smith’s (1776/1993) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. They read: The origins of capitalism can be traced back to The Wealth of Nations, written by philosopher and economist Adam Smith. This work outlines the fundamental principles of laissez-faire economic policy and free market enterprise. Its thesis is that government should not try to control or direct economic activity; the means of production should be privately owned and operated for profit in competitive markets. Capitalism and the United States’ economic system are based on the ideas put forth in The Wealth of Nations, in which it is argued that free market economies are more productive and beneficial to their societies. Critics of capitalism and laissez-faire economics cite an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth and power in the United States.

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Time in existence of The Wealth of Nations and the origins of Capitalism was manipulated with a timeline so that it seemed relatively old or new, and participants then responded to items that tapped the legitimacy of the ideas contained in The Wealth of Nations (e.g., “The ideas found in The Wealth of Nations are legitimate”) and a measure of economic system justification from Kay and Jost (2003), re-worded to focus on the American economic system (e.g., “The American economic system operates as it should” and “Most American economic policies serve the greater good”). Economic system justification and perceptions of capitalism as legitimate were greater when the origins of capitalism were portrayed as older. Consistent with predictions, legitimacy mediated the relation between time in existence and system justification. System justification also mediated the relation between time in existence and legitimacy, indicating that these beliefs reinforced one other. People derive value from longevity through a heuristic process (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2014a; Eidelman et al., 2010). But it is possible that the effects of longevity on legitimacy and justification are due to rationalization. Dependence increases motivation to rationalize social systems (Kay et al., 2009; Van der Toorn et al., 2011), and people may feel more dependent on social systems that persist for longer periods. To address this alternative account and to demonstrate the additive effects of heuristic processing and motivation (Chen & Chaiken, 1999)— in this case to rationalize the status quo—we recruited two groups who should differ in their dependence on a system. Americans and Indians participated in an online study about the Indian Caste system (Blanchar & Eidelman, 2013, Study 2). A description of this system indicated that, historically, Indians were categorized by their occupations into hierarchical castes and that this system soon became hereditary, with social status determined by birth and largely fixed. The description went on to note consequences of this system, including limited opportunity for those from lower castes, pervasive discrimination, and an unequal distribution of wealth and power. To manipulate time in existence, some read that this system had been around for “a few hundred years,” others read that it had been around for thousands of years (in fact, scholars disagree about the origins of the system and both can be said to be true). Participants then responded to statements to measure the legitimacy of the Caste system, its justification (a system justification scale developed by Jost & Thompson, 2000, re-worded to reflect Indian society), and their dependence on the Caste system.

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We found additive effects for nationality and time in existence: Indians reported that the Caste system was more legitimate and justified than Americans, and both groups reported that this system was more legitimate and more justified when said to exist for longer. Not surprisingly, Indians reported feeling more dependent on the Caste System, and this dependence accounted for the relation between nationality and system justification. By contrast, time in existence did not predict system justification through dependence but instead through legitimacy. Time in existence was unrelated to feelings of system dependence and continued to predict justification of the caste system and perceptions of this system as legitimate even when accounting for self-reported dependence. We again found that system justification and legitimacy mediated the effects of time in existence; legitimacy increased justification of the status quo, and justification of the status quo increased legitimacy (and, in this case, better model fit was found when legitimacy mediated the effects of time in existence and system justification). These data indicate a unique path to the justification of inequality. In addition to (and distinct from) processes of rationalization, inequality is justified through a heuristic process whereby longer-standing social systems are simply assumed to be legitimate.

10. THE OTHER SIDE AND THE OUTER LIMITS Were a visitor to our planet to read this paper in order to understand how humans form judgments and make decisions, it would likely conclude that humans prefer nothing new, that they are always creatures of habit, that they reject innovation, lack curiosity, and sample no cuisines but their parents’. This conclusion is obviously wrong; we have been investigating only one side of the coin, and our review specifies its details with reference to its reverse. I dwell in Possibility— A fairer House than Prose —Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson describes her belief that the possible world is more beautiful than the world she directly experiences. But when considering when people discard the status quo for other options, we are struck by two things: the ease with which we can generate examples of people’s preference for new alternatives (e.g., cars, cell phones, clothes), and second, how little

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support this provides for the other side. Often enough, people don’t seem smitten with what is new, as much as they desire what is new and improved. This distinction is important, because it sneaks the status quo in through the back door. We return to Edmund Burke, as our example of a thinker wellknown for his love of tradition. But Burke was not opposed to innovation and change; he advocated for a slow and gradual approach. Change is sometimes necessary, and Burke wanted to remind that it is often best to be cautious and to draw on the wisdom of the ages. Emily Dickinson may have dwelt in possibility in her imagination, but in life she rarely left her home and its garden. When a young North American adult ventures out for her first taste of Jamaican curry, she is far more likely to try curried chicken than curried goat; we prefer novelty in bite-sized pieces, with a strong backdrop of familiarity: children’s desire for novel foods increases when presented with an already-liked food (Pliner & Stallberg-White, 2000), infants’ desire for novel pictures increases when they are paired with a picture previously shown (Fantz, 1964), and stock market gains for new product ventures are greater when an alliance is formed with an established firm (Rao, Chandy, & Prabhu, 2008). New options entail uncertainty and risk, but this seems to be counteracted with a “secure base,” in the same manner that infants explore the world best in the presence of a secure parent attachment (Bowlby, 1973). There are many, many motives to seek change, and a thorough review of them is beyond our scope or grasp (and, thankfully, page limitations). But there is room for an enumeration of some of the most likely suspects. People will seek change out of boredom, curiosity, self-interest, when evidence exists that the status quo is harmful to some or many, when excellent arguments are made, when evidence of the success of alternatives is compellingly shared, when immigration or other movement creates interaction between cultural groups, in the face of economic threat, during economic downturns, during war or other conflict, with demographic change, with technological innovation, with generational repopulation of institutions, with changes in taxation or laws of property, with social movements, after reading a novel of compelling fiction, after having a creative idea (e.g., Boninger, Krosnick, & Berent, 1995; Higgins & Sorrentino, 1990; Silvia, 2006). The list above is long and unstructured, and it is a mere sample of the possible sources of preference against a status quo. Our argument is not that status quo processes are robust to challenge. Indeed, they are often fragile and small. But the importance of status quo, existence, and longevity biases are

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their breadth, their ubiquity, their commonplace nature, and the speed and lack of deliberation with which they are deployed. Tomkins (1962) noted that the competitor with stability and familiarity—the slayer of the status quo—isn’t conflict or social forces, but rather interest. Attention and curiosity motivate people to seek new experiences and uncover new sources of reward. If people were not intrigued by unfamiliar things, novelty would always be frightening, and people would rarely explore or discover anything. When left to our own devices, we tend toward the tried and true. People can seek novelty, step away from experience, in search of new opportunities for reward. People will give up the status quo—but they must have a reason or impetus to do so. Without this motivation and opportunity, satisfaction with the status quo is likely to prevail.

11. CONCLUSIONS We return to the historical and philosophical review of the Introduction. Hume argued that people confuse what is with what ought to be. Our research supports this contention quite strongly. People do prefer what is, and they quite often equate this existence with what is good, right, and ought to be. And the extension of this idea, championed by Burke, is that longer tradition is more valued, its existence more telling, “the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them.” Our data strongly support the contention that longevity is evidence of high value across a variety of domains. Both Hume and Burke argued that the is/ought conflation is neither reasoned nor deliberate. Our data support this as well; in our experiments, the evidence is quite good that these judgments are made heuristically, quickly, and without deliberate skepticism of the status quo. What our data do not do—or at least do not do well—is answer whether or not these biases are a good thing. In Candide, Voltaire (1759/1998) criticizes the Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz, who argued that the existence of any imperfection in earthly matters would be a sign that God is not all-powerful (or worse that God is not good). Leibniz argued that because God must be perfect, the world he created must be perfect also (Leibniz, 1686/1989). The implications are spelled out by Professor Pangloss:

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[T]hings cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. . .. they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best. Voltaire (1759/1998, pp. 1–2)

Later, Pangloss claims that “all this is for the very best end, for if there is a volcano at Lisbon it could be in no other spot; and it is impossible but things should be as they are, for everything is for the best” (p. 13). Candide can be understood as a novel-length criticism of the notion that existence was its own evidence of moral goodness. Others, including some philosophers, politicians, and religionists have argued that these biases serve us well (see Greene, 2003; Hefner, 1980; Leopold, 1949; Peikoff, 1993). And elsewhere, we have argued that this expectation and valuing of consistency, stability, and tradition are essential to everyday epistemology: The principal rule of induction is that we expect the future to be like the past. We effortlessly and unconsciously expect gravity to hold us to the ground every morning, we expect water to be wet, ice cream to be cold, that particle physics and brain surgery are difficult and cultivating dandelions is easy. The expectation of stability is critical; it is axiomatic. Eidelman and Crandall (2012, p. 270)

We have argued that stability is absolutely essential to good cognitive functioning; otherwise, we would literally not know which way is up. By contrast, in our experiments, we show that in preferring the status quo, valuing mere existence, and privileging longstanding tradition, participants are not acting in a way that is strictly rational. They have equated existence with goodness, confused longevity with loveliness, and subjected alternatives to higher standards of judgment, all in the absence of evidence in support of the assumption. But we have constructed our experiments to demonstrate these flaws—in a way they are the scientist’s version of a philosopher’s thought experiment—we provide a compelling demonstration of the existence of a process. Little can be learned in the all-too-common event that heuristics lead to excellent results. But we, too, cannot conclude that a heuristic is good or bad (e.g., Stanovich, 2011), and we cannot demonstrate from our experiments the prevalence of the phenomena, nor its positive or negative effect in daily life (cf. Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988). And so we leave the reader, empirically, with the very issue with which we began. We have a fairly clear-eyed view of what is. People treat what is as evidence for what ought to be, and they treat longevity as evidence of

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goodness, and they do this with a minimum of cognitive effort. Is this a good thing? We cannot convert our observations to moral judgment. Perhaps we should not.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Denise Beike and David Schroeder for comments on an early version of this chapter, and John Blanchar for his contribution to the research described herein.

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