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10.13007/419
Ideas for Leaders #419
What is the Psychology Behind Resistance
to Change?
Key Concept
Successful change does not only depend on howchange agents manage the change, but also onemployee attitudes toward change, which are shapedby psychological antecedents. Specifically, well-informed employees who have high social supportwill have a more positive attitude about organizationalchange efforts.
Idea Summary
Why are some people more open to change andothers instinctively resistant to anything thatsignificantly alters the status quo? The key is often inan individual’s basic attitude toward change. Somepeople will default to an unfavourable, negativeattitude toward change that leads to resistance, whileothers have within them a favourable positive attitudetoward change that leads to openness.
Cognitive biases — biases in how people take in,interpret and remember information —can have amajor effect on their attitudes toward change. Forexample, we tend to put all information into presetcategories; thus, if new information is categorized in acertain way, then anything related to that informationis automatically lumped into the same category.
Schematic processing — basically the easy road toremembering information by focusing less on detailedinformation and more on assumptions and previousconclusions — is another cognitive shortcut thatimpacts attitudes on change. Schematic processing iswhy, for example, we resort to stereotypes whenprocessing information.
The bottom line of these cognitive biases is thatpeople don’t take all of the information available intoconsideration when developing their attitudes aboutthat information; instead they rely on previousinformation and evaluations. Thus, a person who hasseen a change initiative fail is going to remember thatfailure, and evaluate new change initiatives in thecontext of that failure. The antidote to such cognitive
ShareAuthors
Iglesias, Jose Luis C.
Institutions
New York University School of Engineering
Source
Working Paper
Idea conceived
December 2012
Idea posted
July 2014
DOI number
Subject
Change Management
Leadership
Talent Management
Stress Management
Psychology
context of that failure. The antidote to such cognitive
biases is information: the more information peoplehave about new change initiatives, the less likely theyare going to use psychological antecedents to fill inthe blanks.
There’s also a social component to attitudes. Socialsupport in the workplace — ranging from empathyand tangible assistance from colleagues andmanagers to structures that make people available tohelp — help reduce stress and improve jobsatisfaction. The emotional benefit of social supportbuilds a more positive attitude toward change.
Social support can even help combat cognitive biases,since employees gather much of their informationfrom social interactions.
Business Application
There are many methodologies and guidelines forimplementing organizational change, including stepsto overcome the natural and sometimes stubbornresistance that all change agents will meet.Recognizing that resistance to change is an attitude,and understanding the psychological roots of thatattitude, can help to overcome this resistance.
Knowing how employees process information is a firststep. Companies must override the cognitive biasesthat might lead to a negative attitude by providing asmuch detailed information about the change aspossible. Don’t let employees come to their ownconclusions about what is happening and why, sincethose conclusions will be coloured by their biases.
Understanding the role of emotions from socialsupport is also important. Create a foundation andculture of full support for employees — e.g.encourage collaborative efforts, knowledge sharingand the expression of empathy in your organizations.Emotion is stronger than cognition in developingcertain attitudes. Secure and well-supportedemployees are less likely to resist your changeinitiatives.
Further Reading
Employee's Attitudes Toward OrganizationalChange: A Cognitive and Social PsychologicalPerspective. Jose Luis C. Iglesias. Working Paper(December 2012).
Further Relevant Resources
Jose Luis C. Iglesias' profile on LinkedIn
Jose Luis C. Iglesias' author profile at SSRN
NYU Stern School of Business Executive Education profile at
IEDP
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