OPINION: Why people hate to change, including clothes

March 15--When I was a lad, I wore khakis and button-down shirts and railed against people who were fearful of change. In my dotage, I wear khakis and button-down shirts and rail against people who are fearful of change.

We've all got things we don't want to change. Mine happen to be clothes.

For many years I housed a fashion consultant who nagged me about my wardrobe choices. This fashion consultant wore black clothes, summer and winter, with flip-flops in the winter and Ugg boots in the summer. I felt safe in ignoring her advice.

Garrison Keillor writes that the town motto of Lake Wobegon, Minn., is "Sumos quod sumos" -- We are what we are -- which I have suggested that St. Louis adopt. As my colleague Bill McClellan has pointed out, we are the descendants of those who stayed behind and built a nice monument to the more adventurous souls who opened the West.

Change is hard for us. Last week the Ballwin Board of Aldermen voted not to take part in any city-county merger plan, no matter what it might eventually look like. This seemed a tad premature, but Ballwin apparently wants to beat the rush.

Also last week a group of local musicians and music fans rose up against the city's plans to let a Hollywood talent agency stage two "world-class" music festivals here every summer. This may have had less to do with aversion to change than aversion to being included out of the plans, but economics plays a big role in attitudes toward change.

For example, there's no economic incentive for me to lose the khakis and button-down shirts. I am not in a profession that values fashion (see "McClellan," Ibid) and I'm way, way past thinking I can fool anybody by changing my clean and rumpled look.

In this aversion to change, I am not alone, nor is St. Louis. We were, after all, promised that if we built a downtown mall and turned Union Station into a festival marketplace, downtown would bloom. We were told that if we spent $240 million in taxes to build a domed stadium to attract an NFL team here, it would more than pay for itself and ensure that the team would never again get itchy feet.

Indeed, social scientists have studied these questions for decades and have concluded that we are not alone. As a rule, people are change-averse -- so much so that we cling to our beliefs even when the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.

Science calls this phenomenon "belief perseverance." It helps explain why U.S. forces were in Iraq for seven years and are still in Afghanistan after more than 12 years. It would explain climate-change denial and opposition to health care reform.

Then there's the commitment issue, as described by the psychologist and marketing expert Robert Cialdini: Once we make a choice, we put pressure on ourselves to act in accordance with that prior commitment. Evidence be damned, we don't like to change our minds. This explains why some people (see "McClellan," Ibid) continue to root for the Chicago Cubs.

In fact, once we make a choice, we become more confident that it's correct. Studies have been done showing that horse players are more confident of their horse's chances after they lay money on them.

This sets up what's known as "confirmation bias." Having committed to an idea, we look for evidence backing up what we think and ignore evidence to the contrary. Fortunately, the Internet and cable news make it possible for people to go through life without ever running into inconvenient facts.

A related notion in economics is that of "sunk cost." Once you sink money into something, you stay with it even when rational arguments say it's never going to pay off and you should cut your losses.

Casinos and bookies make a lot of money on this sort of thinking. If you lose a lot of money on a bad bet, you're likely to chase that money with more bad bets. People simply hate to lose.

There have now been so many studies of change and loss-aversion that it's possible to put a mathematical formula to it: Assuming a 50-50 proposition (say a coin toss), people have to think they'll make twice as much money from winning as they'd lose if the toss goes against them.

Thus, to get a St. Louis band to give up their funky local music festivals, you'd have to convince the band members the big festival would be twice as good for them.

To get the Ballwin Board of Aldermen to support city-county merger, you'd have to convince them they'd be two times better off going along with it than they would be by standing pat.

Here we're ignoring the possibility that people might do things that don't benefit them directly but are in the larger common good. Don't be ridiculous.

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