Market Musings

Habit is the flywheel of society

The image of an enormous, unstoppable, spinning flywheel representing the inertia of a society casts a gloomy pall over the prospect of social change.

However, James also offers a theory on “how an individual settles into a new opinion.” His prescription, paraphrased below, indicates that the process of changing an opinion is always the same.

First, each of us has a collection of existing opinions that are tested when we meet with a new experience. This new stimuli may be an external criticism or contradiction of our views, it may be the result of personal reflection, or it may be a challenge to existing opinions based upon the introduction of new facts or new personal desires that are not satisfied by existing opinions.

The resulting inner turmoil requires us to seek some way to incorporate this new experience into our accepted (and comfortable) opinions. James argues that in our effort to resolve the turmoil, we are all “extreme conservatives” and we will naturally try to preserve as many of our existing opinions. After testing different ideas, we finally develop a new opinion that we can “graft upon the ancient stock of old opinions.”

The new opinion formed acts as a lubricant between our core of existing opinions and the challenge faced by the new experience. This new opinion soon becomes accepted as part of the new core of “truths.”

James states “the new opinion preserves the older stock of truths with a minimum of modification, stretching them just enough to make them admit the novelty, but conceiving that in ways as familiar as the case leaves possible.” Indeed, an opinion forced upon us to accept the new stimuli would simply not be accepted.

To restate this: when we learn of something that challenges our perspectives, our actions, or our opinions, we must find our own way of accepting that change without it challenging us too much. We seek to mediate the change in such a way as to minimize the “damage” done to our existing beliefs. We all naturally remain loyal to our older, accepted opinions, and when we are unable to merge new ideas with our bastion of beliefs, we tend to simply ignore the new in favor of the old, and in extreme cases we—to use James’ word—abuse the people or circumstances that challenge our preconceptions.

For social marketers intent on changing individuals’ behaviors and the opinions that guide these behaviors, we must apply James’ thinking. Simply trying to project a new opinion will be futile.

We must identify the accepted opinions in our audience in order to identify a lubricant to merge the new idea into the “flywheel” of old opinions. Indeed, to help promote social change, we must not only convey the message that will challenge existing perspectives, but also provide the assistance to help people reconcile their opinions, beliefs, actions or ideals with the new experience.