Clinical and neuroscientific literature often defines it as a lack of motivation to generate distinct cognitive processes needed to attend to a problem or issue.
The physics term inertia emphasizes the rigidity and resistance to change in the method of cognitive processing that has been used for a significant amount of time.
Cognitive inertia has been causally implicated in disregarding impending threats to one's health or environment, enduring political values and deficits in task switching.
Interest in the phenomenon was primarily taken up by economic and industrial psychologists to explain resistance to change in brand loyalty, group brainstorming, and business strategies.
Critics have stated that the term oversimplifies resistant thought processes and suggests a more integrative approach that involves motivation, emotion, and developmental factors.
[1][2] Ways to combat persistence of cognitive style are also seen in Aristotle's syllogistic method which employs logical consistency of the premises to convince an individual of the conclusion's validity.
One of the earliest personality researchers, W. Lankes, more broadly defined perseveration as "being confined to the cognitive side" and possibly "counteracted by strong will".
[4] These early ideas of perseveration were the precursor to how the term cognitive inertia would be used to study certain symptoms in patients with neurodegenerative disorders, rumination and depression.
[7] In McGuire's initial study involving cognitive inertia, participants gave their opinions of how probable they believed various topics to be.
[11] The lack of change was reasoned to be due to persistence in the individual's existing thought processes which inhibited their ability to re-evaluate their initial opinion properly, or as McGuire called it, cognitive inertia.
where p(a) and p(b) refer to the initial opinions, before the communication induced changes.This formula was used by McGuire to show that the effect of a persuasive message on a related, but unmentioned, topic (d) took time to sink in.
Despite the evidence provided by scientific discovery, there are still those – including nations – who deny its incidence in favor of existing patterns of development.
[18] Political scientist Francis Fukuyama has asserted that humans imbue intrinsic value on the rules they enact and follow, especially in the larger societal institutions that create order and stability.
After decades of economic decline, the United Kingdom's referendum to leave the EU was seen as an example of the dramatic movement after a long period of governmental inertia.
The lack of deliberative processing of existing problems and levels of commitment in the relationship can lead to increased stress, arguments, dissatisfaction, and divorce.
However, unless the satisfaction survey is completed immediately after the point of purchase, the customer response is often based on an existing mindset about the company, not the actual quality of experience.
[24] This cognitive inertia at the individual and corporate level has been proposed as reasons to why companies do not adopt new strategies to combat the ever-increasing decline in the business or take advantage of the potential.
[24] More famously, cognitive inertia in upper management at Polaroid was proposed as one of the main contributing factors to the company's outdated competitive strategy.
Management strongly held that consumers wanted high-quality physical copies of their photos, where the company would make their money.
Despite Polaroid's extensive research and development into the digital market, their inability to refocus their strategy to hardware sales instead of film eventually led to their collapse.
[27] A review of 27 firms integrating the use of big data analytics found cognitive inertia to hamper the widespread implementation, with managers from sectors that did not focus on digital technology seeing the change as unnecessary and cost prohibitive.
It is proposed that leaders can be blinded by their authority and too easily disregard those at the front-line of the problem causing them to reject remunerative ideas.
[6] In a review paper that outlined strategies that are effective for combating depression, the Socratic method was suggested to overcome cognitive inertia.
[1] In nosological literature relating to the symptom or disorder of apathy, clinicians have used cognitive inertia as one of the three main criteria for diagnosis.
As a clinical diagnostic criterion, Thant and Yager described it as "impaired abilities to elaborate and sustain goals and plans of actions, to shift mental sets, and to use working memory".
[37] Before taking part in an electronic brainstorming session, participants were primed with pictures that motivated achievement to combat cognitive inertia.
[38] Cognitive inertia is a critical dimension of clinical apathy, described as a lack of motivation to elaborate plans for goal-directed behavior or automated processing.
[35] Nursing home patients who have dementia have been found to have larger reductions in functional brain connectivity, primarily in the corpus callosum, important for communication between hemispheres.
[39] In an extensive online study, participant opinions were acquired after two readings about various political issues to assess the role of cognitive inertia.