Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

You want to change. You know you need to change. Maybe you’ve read the books, made the plans, set the goals. But when you try to actually do something different, your brain puts up a fight. Every single time.

Often inconsistency-avoidance tendency is to blame, and it’s often the reason change feels so bloody difficult — because your brain’s working against you. Not because your brain doesn’t like you; it’s because it’s trying to keep you alive using strategies that stopped working thousands of years ago.

Inconsistency-avoidance tendency is the cognitive bias that makes you resistant to changes in behaviour — what Charlie Munger called the Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency. It’s why getting rid of bad habits is so hard. It’s why you keep doing things the same way even when that way clearly isn’t working, and it’s why your brain fights you when you try to do something different.

Here’s the thing though: this cognitive bias actually gives you a survival advantage, or at least, it used to. When you were prey to other animals, you needed to respond quickly in the same way you’d responded before. If running worked last time a predator showed up, you didn’t want to stand there thinking about whether you should try something different this time. You ran. Same response. Every time. No thinking required.

If that decision had worked before (and you’d survived), your brain made absolutely certain you did the same thing next time. In this way, consistency kept you alive.

Then humans started living in groups. When everyone in the group reacted the same way they had before, the group effect was more effective as a survival trait. Everyone knew what everyone else would do. No confusion. No surprises. Consistent responses meant effective cooperation and, perhaps, overall survival.

Brilliant system, for prehistoric life, where your life hung in the balance on a regular basis.

The Modern World

The trouble is, you’re not prehistoric man running from large scary animals. You’re not hunting for food in packs. Instead you’re in a modern world of uncertainty that’s often chaotic, and you need to handle much more complex tasks in a variety of situations, very different from our ancestors’ hard-wired fight, flight, freeze responses.

You need to change your responses for the modern world. Your habits and behaviours need to match your environment, but often your brain doesn’t want to give up the survival traits of the past.

People Resist Change

The patient who keeps eating the same foods even though they’re making them sick. The patient who keeps following the same routines even though they’re miserable. The patient who keeps thinking the same thoughts even though they’re destroying their mental health.

They want to change. They know they should change. But inconsistency-avoidance tendency is stronger than their conscious desire for improvement. This cognitive bias programmes them to resist change.

Because old habits at one time may have worked, your brain is reluctant to give them up. It doesn’t matter if those habits are good or bad. It doesn’t matter if they’re helping you or hurting you. Your brain wants consistency, and it will fight to maintain the mental patterns you’ve already established.

Here’s the really insidious part: this tendency can even be used against you.

Brainwashing and Salesmen

In the Korean War, some captured US soldiers were said to have undergone brainwashing. One of the methods used was to make small repetitive changes in the behaviour of the captives. Each change built on the last. Inconsistency-avoidance tendency anchored each change, so that, step by step, the captives would learn to comply.

Few of you have been caught behind enemy lines or subjected to brainwashing. But you’ve all been sold something by a salesman who used exactly the same technique. They call it the yes-set, and it works on your inconsistency-avoidance bias to help them close the sale.

It works like this.

‘I know you like this car.’ (You nod.) ‘I can see it’s caught your eye.’ (You agree.) ‘We’ve been talking a while.’ (True.) ‘I know you want a good deal.’ (Of course.) ‘Would you be happy to buy it now?’

Each time the salesman delivers an innocuous comment, you agree with a ‘yes’ answer. This builds a habitual ‘yes’ response. By the time they ask if you want to buy the car, you’ve already said yes four times. Your brain wants to be consistent. So you say yes again.

That’s inconsistency-avoidance tendency being weaponised against you.

But here’s what you need to understand. This same bias that makes you vulnerable to manipulation also makes you incredibly resistant to positive change. It’s not selective. It doesn’t distinguish between good consistency and bad consistency. It just wants you to keep doing what you’ve been doing.

It’s All About Consistency

In a modern changing world, you need to change to survive, but as we’ve discussed already, your brain is hard-wired to resist change. Every time you try to change your habits, replace them with better ones, do things differently, your inconsistency-avoidance tendency activates and you unconsciously resist.

You remain loyal to your old life, your profession, your old routines, even when they’re making you miserable, even when they’re clearly not working, and even when you know you need to change.

Your brain doesn’t care. It just wants consistency.

Seven Habits to Use This Mental Trait for Positive Change

First, recognise that your resistance to change isn’t a character flaw. It’s not weakness. It’s not lack of willpower. It’s a hardwired bias designed to keep you safe in a world that no longer exists. Understanding this helps you to stop beating yourself up for finding change difficult.

Second, make small changes. Your brain resists big changes more than small ones. If you try to overhaul your entire life overnight, your inconsistency-avoidance tendency will fight you with everything it’s got. But if you make one small change, then another, then another, you can use the same bias in your favour.

Remember the Korean War brainwashing technique? Small repetitive changes, each building on the last. You can do the same thing to yourself, but for good.

Third, build new consistencies. Your brain wants consistency. Give it new patterns to be consistent about. Don’t just try to stop doing the bad habit. Replace it with a good one. Then be consistent about the good one. Eventually, your brain will defend the new habit just as fiercely as it defended the old one.

Fourth, expect resistance. When you try to change, your brain will push back. That’s normal. That’s expected. That’s your inconsistency-avoidance tendency doing its job. Don’t interpret the resistance as a sign you’re failing or that change is impossible. It’s just your brain being a brain.

Fifth, use commitment devices. Tell people what you’re going to change. Write it down. Make it public. Your brain wants to be consistent with your stated commitments. Use that against your own resistance.

Sixth, recognise when others are using this bias against you. When someone’s trying to get you to agree to something by getting you to agree to a series of smaller things first, that’s the yes-set. You can say no. Breaking the pattern is difficult, but you can do it once you recognise what’s happening.

Seventh, question your loyalties. You remain loyal to things that no longer serve you because your brain prefers consistency over improvement. Ask yourself regularly whether your habits, routines, and behaviours are actually helping you, or just familiar.

Summary

Your brain evolved to keep you alive in a dangerous prehistoric world. It did a brilliant job of that. But that world doesn’t exist anymore. The strategies that kept you alive then are holding you back now.

You need to outsmart your own brain. Not by fighting it directly (you’ll lose), but by understanding how it works and using that knowledge to create change despite the resistance.

Start small. Be consistent. Build new patterns. Expect resistance. Keep going anyway.

Your brain will eventually accept the new patterns. It just takes time, and persistence, and understanding that the difficulty you’re experiencing isn’t a sign that something’s wrong with you. It’s a sign that you’re fighting against millions of years of evolution designed to keep you exactly where you are.

Change is hard. But it’s not impossible. You just need to stop expecting it to be easy and start working with your brain instead of against it.

Further reading

• Munger, C. T. (1995). The Psychology of Human Misjudgment. Speech delivered at Harvard Law School.
• Cialdini, R. B. (2006). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Revised ed.). Harper Business.
• Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.
• Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. L. (2009). Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization. Harvard Business Press.
• Duhigg, C. (2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Random House.