In
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
, social inertia is the resistance to change or the endurance of stable relationships in societies or social groups. Social inertia is the opposite of
social change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations.
Definition
Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or sociocult ...
.
Overview
The idea of social inertia can be traced back to
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence i ...
. According to Bourdieu, each person occupies a position in a social space, which consists of his or her
social class
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the Upper class, upper, Middle class, middle and Working class, lower classes. Membership in a social class can for ...
as well as social relationships and
social networks
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
. Through the individual's engagement in the social space, he or she develops a set of behaviors, lifestyle and habits (which Bourdieu referred to as
habitus) which often serve to maintain the
status quo
is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regard to social, political, religious or military issues. In the sociological sense, the ''status quo'' refers to the current state of social structure and/or values. W ...
. Thus, people are encouraged to "accept the social world as it is, to take it for granted, rather than to rebel against it, to counterpose to it different, even antagonistic, possibles." This can explain the continuity of the social order through time.
Sociologists have examined how economic and
cultural heritage
Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by soci ...
is transmitted across generations, which can lead to strong social inertia even during times of
social progress
Progress is the movement towards a refined, improved, or otherwise desired state. In the context of progressivism, it refers to the proposition that advancements in technology, science, and social organization have resulted, and by extension wi ...
. In particular, Bourdieu found in his studies of Algeria that even during times of rapid economic change, cultural and symbolic factors limited the flexibility of the society to quickly adapt to change.
Therefore, social inertia has been used to explain how dominant
social classes
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inco ...
maintain their status and privilege over time. Currently, this is a hotly debated topic in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. While
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
reaffirmed America's commitment to
equal opportunity
Equal opportunity is a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences, except when particular distinctions can be explicitly justified. The intent is that the important ...
in his second
inaugural address
In government and politics, inauguration is the process of swearing a person into office and thus making that person the incumbent. Such an inauguration commonly occurs through a formal ceremony
A ceremony (, ) is a unified ritualistic event ...
,
Nobel laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...
believes it is a myth that modern society offers
equal opportunity
Equal opportunity is a state of fairness in which individuals are treated similarly, unhampered by artificial barriers, prejudices, or preferences, except when particular distinctions can be explicitly justified. The intent is that the important ...
and high
social mobility
Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given society ...
through mechanisms such as
formal education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Vari ...
.
Examples
In the culture of honor
Example of social inertia in the culture of the United States is the
culture of honor
Honour (British English) or honor (American English; see spelling differences) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of social teaching and of personal ethos, that manifests itself as a ...
which exists in parts of the South and West. In the culture of honor,
violence
Violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or Power (social and p ...
is seen as an acceptable way of responding to insults or threats to a person's self, family, property, or
reputation
The reputation of a social entity (a person, a social group, an organization, or a place) is an opinion about that entity typically as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behavior or performance.
Reputation is a ubiquitous ...
. Some psychologists and historians believe that the culture of honor arose as a way of enforcing order on the frontier, when the South and West were first being settled and there was inadequate
law enforcement
Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society. The term en ...
and little
social order
The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order ...
. According to this hypothesis, herding (which is a solitary activity) should be more closely tied to the culture of honor than farming (which is a cooperative activity). However, some scholars have not found support for this. When researchers examined the relationship between agricultural practices in the rural South and the white male homicide rates in those areas, they did not find that homicide rates were higher in counties that were hilly and arid and therefore more suitable for herding vs. farming. They concluded that homicide rates did not support the herding vs. farming hypothesis for the culture of honor. Therefore,
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
and
poverty
Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in ...
have been offered as alternative explanations for the origins of the culture of honor.
Even though the economic and social circumstances of the South and West have since changed, the culture of honor persists due to social inertia. It has become a
social norm
Social norms are shared standards of acceptance, acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into wikt:rule, rules and laws. Social normat ...
in southern and western culture, and these norms persist even when economies change.
In creative labor
In a 2013 journal article in the ''
Journal of Sociology
The ''Journal of Sociology'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering sociology with a focus on Australia. The journal's editors-in-chief are Steve Matthewman (University of Auckland) and Kate Huppatz (University of Western Sydney). ...
'', sociologist Scott Brook applied the theory of social inertia to the field of creative labor. Specifically, Brook was concerned with why so many students would continue to seek degrees in creative fields (such as
the arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
and
creative writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary ...
), even when the oversupply of labor meant that many students were unable to find employment in those fields after graduation. Even if they were able to find employment, they earned less than their peers with non-creative degrees. Scott used Bourdieu's notion of social inertia to suggest that students who were drawn to the non-commercial nature of creative fields came from families with low
socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status (SES) is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family's economic access to resources and social position in relation to others. When analyzing a family's ...
and whose parents had not been able to develop a career themselves. Students followed in their parents' footsteps by choosing educational pursuits which were less likely to lead to high-earning careers, thus leading to social inertia in income across generations.
In collaborations
Social inertia has been used as a way of studying
collaboration
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
s and
interactions
Interaction is action that occurs between two or more objects, with broad use in philosophy and the sciences. It may refer to:
Science
* Interaction hypothesis, a theory of second language acquisition
* Interaction (statistics)
* Interactions o ...
between people. Specifically, social inertia has been defined as a measurement of how likely people are to continue collaborating with previous partners or members of the same team. An analysis of large-scale, complex networks such as the
IMDb
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...
showed that two types of "extreme" collaboration behaviors appeared more than average – some people collaborate with the same partners over and over again, while others change partners frequently.
In attitudes and attitude change
Psychological studies on
attitude
Attitude may refer to:
Philosophy and psychology
* Attitude (psychology), an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value
* Metaphysics of presence
* Propositional attitude, a relational mental state connecting a person to a pro ...
s and
attitude change Attitudes are associated beliefs and behaviors towards some object. They are not stable, and because of the communication and behavior of other people, are subject to change by social influences, as well as by the individual's motivation to maint ...
have found that participants are reluctant to reduce their confidence in an estimate that they have made even after they receive new information that goes against their original estimate. Researchers have hypothesized that this "inertia effect" is due to participants' psychological commitment to their initial judgments.
In romantic relationships
Some psychological studies have shown that premarital
cohabitation
Cohabitation is an arrangement where people who are not married, usually couples, live together. They are often involved in a romantic or sexually intimate relationship on a long-term or permanent basis. Such arrangements have become increas ...
(living together before
marriage
Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a culturally and often legally recognized union between people called spouses. It establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and their children, and between ...
) is associated with an decreased risk of
divorce
Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the ...
, and this has been termed the cohabitation effect. Researchers believe that one reason for this effect is that living together increases the inertia of the relationship – i.e. the likelihood that a couple will continue to stay together vs. break up. Inertia in cohabiting couples occurs because living together imposes constraints on a relationship (a shared lease, etc.) that make relationships harder to end. Therefore, a cohabiting couple may stay together even if they are not compatible. Because living together represents an ambiguous form of commitment compared with marriage, cohabiting may not increase the levels of dedication in either partner. Partners may "slide" into marriage through cohabitation instead of making a firm decision to commit to each other, leading to problems in the marriage in the future.
However, the research on whether higher divorce rates are due to the cohabitation effect are mixed. For example, researchers have found that the relationship between cohabitation and divorce also depends on factors such as when the couple was married (for example, marriages which take place after 1996 do not show the cohabitation effect), their race/ethnicity, and their marriage plans at the time of cohabitation. Other studies have found that what has been called the cohabitation effect is entirely attributable to other factors.
In animal behavior
The term social inertia was used by A.M. Guhl in 1968 to describe
dominance hierarchies
In biology, a dominance hierarchy (formerly and colloquially called a pecking order) is a type of social hierarchy that arises when members of animal social groups interact, creating a ranking system. A dominant higher-ranking individual is som ...
in animal groups. Studies of animal behavior have found that groups of animals can form social orders or
social hierarchies
A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...
that are relatively fixed and stable. For example,
chickens
The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...
establish a social order within the group based on
pecking behaviors. Even when some of the chickens were treated with an
androgen
An androgen (from Greek ''andr-'', the stem of the word meaning "man") is any natural or synthetic steroid hormone that regulates the development and maintenance of male characteristics in vertebrates by binding to androgen receptors. This inc ...
to increase their aggressiveness, the established social order suppressed their exhibition of aggressive behaviors so that social order was maintained.
This same effect has been found in other
birds
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...
as well as in invertebrates such as
social wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...
s and the
burying beetle
Burying beetles or sexton beetles, genus ''Nicrophorus'', are the best-known members of the family Silphidae (carrion beetles). Most of these beetles are black with red markings on the elytra (forewings). Burying beetles are true to their name†...
N. orbicollis. Researchers theorize that this lack of change in social hierarchies even under the influence of
aggression
Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other harm upon another individual; although it can be channeled into creative and practical outlets for some. It may occur either reacti ...
hormones is due to the effects of familiarity – animals learn their place in the social hierarchy of a group within the first few encounters with other group members. This will cause low-ranking animals treated with aggression hormones to behave aggressively towards animals from other groups but not towards dominant members of their own group.
Related concepts
Cultural inertia
The psychologist Michael Zarate has coined the term "cultural inertia" to refer to reactions to social change, such as those caused by
immigration
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
. Cultural inertia is defined as the desire to avoid cultural change, and also the desire for change to continue once it is already occurring. Within the cultural inertia framework, the dominant group is stable and resists cultural change, while subordinate groups desire cultural changes which incorporate their cultural traditions so that they don't have to
assimilate into the dominant culture. In the context of the United States and immigration, the framework suggests that white majority members resist the cultural change that occurs from immigration, while immigrant groups try to enact change in U.S. culture.
Cultural inertia is related to
social psychological
Social psychology is the scientific study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people or by social norms. Social psychologists typically explain human behavior as a result of the ...
theories such as the instrumental model of
group conflict
Group conflict, or hostilities between different groups, is a feature common to all forms of human social organization (e.g., sports teams, ethnic groups, nations, religions, gangs), and also occurs in social animals. Although group conflict is on ...
,
acculturative fit, and
system justification theory. It is a contributor to intergroup
prejudice
Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's per ...
due to groups' fear of cultural change.
See also
*
Norm (social)
Social norms are shared standards of acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into rules and laws. Social normative influences or soci ...
*
Psychological inertia
Psychological inertia is the tendency to maintain the status-quo (or default option) unless compelled by a psychological motive to intervene or reject this.
Psychological inertia is similar to the status-quo bias but there is an important distin ...
*
Social conservatism
Social conservatism is a political philosophy and variety of conservatism which places emphasis on traditional power structures over social pluralism. Social conservatives organize in favor of duty, traditional values and social institutio ...
*
Status quo bias
Status quo bias is an emotional bias; a preference for the maintenance of one's current or previous state of affairs, or a preference to not undertake any action to change this current or previous state. The current baseline (or status quo) is take ...
*
System justification
System justification theory (SJT) is a theory within social psychology that system-justifying beliefs serve a psychologically palliative function. It proposes that people have several underlying needs, which vary from individual to individual, that ...
References
{{Reflist, 30em
Psychological concepts
Sociological terminology
Cognitive inertia
Social conservatism