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What is commitment & consistency bias?

Commitment and consistency bias is our tendency to continue to act according to the previous commitments we’ve made. It’s a reluctance to change our course of action once we’ve chosen it.

It took me 10-years to break a personal bad habit. Five years of knowing I wanted to stop, and another five years of actually trying to stop before I beat it. How many bad habits have you been able to shake? Probably less than you’d like, if any at all.

That’s the power of commitment and consistency bias. We are creatures of habit, for better or for worse.

It’s the reason why you like a decision more the moment after you make it. It’s why you have trouble updating your point of view when presented with new information. It’s why a sales rep will do just about anything to get their foot in the door. Because once you commit to something, you are likely to commit to much more.

Charlie Munger’s Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency

Charlie Munger explores this concept in his speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment,” printed in the book Poor Charlie’s Almanack. He calls this tendency Inconsistency-Avoidance Tendency, writing:

The brain of man conserves programming space by being reluctant to change, which is a form of inconsistency avoidance. We see this in all human habits, constructive and destructive…Given this situation, it is not too much in many cases to appraise early-formed habits as destiny. When Marley’s miserable ghost says, “I wear the chains I forged in life,” he is talking about chains of habit that were too light to be felt before they became too strong to be broken.

Why does commitment & consistency bias exist?

For the same reason all of our other mental biases exist: as a short-cut that generally works to help us navigate the world.

As Charlie alludes to, our brains are not infinitely large. To save programming space, the brain decides that once you’ve committed to something, you no longer have to think about that thing. You’re just going to do it. There’s no need to analyze new information or reevaluate your position. Do what you’ve already committed to doing and move on.

Robert B. Cialdini in his textbook, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, highlights how society at large tends to see this consistency bias as a positive trait, while viewing inconsistency as a negative one.

Cialdini writes:

Inconsistency is commonly thought to be an undesirable personality trait. The person whose beliefs, words, and deeds don’t match may be seen as indecisive, confused, two-faced, or even mentally ill. On the other side, a high degree of consistency is normally associated with personal and intellectual strength. It is at the heart of logic, rationality, stability, and honesty.

And this makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. If a mental bias exists in the first place, it means it aids in survival, and would be applauded by society as a whole. Munger says that it fosters faster decision making and encourages cooperation in groups. As we can all attest to, it’s easier to cooperate if people aren’t changing their minds every five minutes.

Examples of commitment & consistency Bias

Commitment & consistency bias affects your behavior all the time.

How many bad habits have you been able to break? Not many. Breaking a bad habit is really hard to do. There’s an entire self-help industry built on trying to change established habits.

Commitment & consistency bias is also infecting your interpretation of reality. Cialdini notes that there are just some things we’d rather not accept as fact. We can use our mental bias towards consistency as protection against unwelcome answers. It’s much easier to continue to believe what we’ve always believed than to accept an unpleasant reality revealed by reason.

While we may be oblivious to our own commitment and consistency bias (until now!), others are using it to profit from us.

Cialdini recounts how a toy store took advantage of his commitment and consistency tendency to keep their sales strong in January after the holiday push.

The company aggressively advertised a specific toy in commercials, and then made sure supply couldn’t meet demand when Cialdini went to the store to purchase it. So, he bought another toy instead and prepared to disappoint his child on Christmas day.

But so strong was Cialdini’s commitment and consistency tendency, the store could bank on him coming back to buy the original sold-out toy after Christmas. And Cialdini did.

This isn’t the only technique crafty salespeople use to take our money, though. The “foot-in-the-door” technique is aimed at getting us to agree to a small commitment, like a small order contract, in anticipation that once we’ve committed, we can be counted on to spend much larger sums in the future.

Even the act of writing something down can be a sales technique. Cialdini references door-to-door sales reps who can cut their canceled orders in half just by having the customer, instead of the salesperson, fill out the sales agreement. Once you’ve committed to something in writing, it’s even harder to fight the consistency bias.

I once attended a free 3-day investing workshop where the host had us fill out a “promise” card. I still have mine in my wallet actually (see, this bias really is powerful). The host had us fill out this laminated promise card on the last day of the workshop, where we “commit” wholeheartedly to obtaining the financial security we all craved. I filled out the card eagerly.

A few days later, my phone rang with a call from one of the workshop’s representatives. They wanted to know if I was going to follow through on my promise to myself, and commit thousands of dollars to pay for their options trading course.

Don’t you think the workshop host knows about the power of commitment and consistency bias? Of course he does.

(As an aside, I enjoyed the free workshop and am grateful to the host for the experience).

How can you Protect yourself from Commitment & Consistency Bias?

Don’t Start bad habits in the first place.

When it comes to bad habits, Munger advises you focus on preventing them before they begin. As Benjamin Franklin says: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Be careful what you commit to.

Cialdini warns us that even a small commitment made in haste can make you more likely to go along with larger commitments later on that are barely related. And once you commit publicly to something, it becomes all the more difficult to change paths. You are pressured both internally by consistency bias, as well as externally from the commitment having been witnessed by others.

Be careful when you’re buying something.

Be on high-alert during transactions with any sales representatives. You can be sure they know this bias inside and out, and will try to use it against you.

If you feel like something’s off, or you’re feeling pressured to just “go along,” take a moment to review what you’ve committed to. See what impact that’s having on your decision making.

Cialdini thinks you may have a feeling in your gut if something is off - a flash of emotion when you’re trapped into committing to something we never wanted in the first place.

So the next time you have this “gut feeling,” take a second to consider if someone wants you to do something for their benefit instead of yours.

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Cialdini PhD, Robert B.. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

Munger, C. T., & Kaufman, P. D. (2008). Poor Charlie's Almanack: The wit and wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Virginia Beach, Va: Donning Co. Pub.

Photo by Brendan Church on Unsplash