Inconsistency-avoidance tendency
Old habits and prior commitments resist change, even against new evidence.
Cialdini's "commitment and consistency" mechanism in Munger's vocabulary. Once we've committed to a position publicly, taken an action, or formed a habit, we resist evidence that the commitment was wrong. "An idea once accepted is rarely dislodged."
The bias is what makes founders defend failing strategies past the point of sense, employees defend bad processes inherited from predecessors, and investors hold losing positions to avoid admitting they were wrong.
The defence is to make changing your mind cheap and routine. Public pre-mortems. Decision journals. Cultures where "I was wrong, here's the new view" is rewarded. Anywhere this culture doesn't exist, prior commitments will silently steer decisions.
Examples in the wild
Failed product lines often get kept alive for years because of who originally championed them. The internal politics of admitting the bet failed outweigh the cost of carrying the dead weight.
Investors who go public with a thesis are measurably worse at updating when the thesis breaks. The public commitment locks them in.
Religious, political, and lifestyle commitments made publicly resist updating even when evidence accumulates. The cost of being seen to change is high.
Inconsistency-avoidance tendency is one of the mental models we apply through real cases inside the Pareto MBA — a part-time program for professionals who want to think clearly about business.