The Human Element

9 Reactance: Why We Feel the Impulse to Resist Change

Few examples better capture the human mind's irrational resistance to change than the seat belt. Today in the US and much of the world, there is overwhelming support for the use of seat belts. Wearing a seat belt reduces your chance of dying in a car crash by nearly 50 percent and saves roughly 30,000 lives in the United States each year. It's a relatively pain‐free precaution with undoubted benefits to personal and public health. Wearing a seat belt, in other words, is an unquestionably good idea.

But in the 1980s, Americans waged war against seat belts. The war began in 1984 when New York became the first state to make wearing a seat belt mandatory. A wave of states soon followed. But this well‐intended policy produced public outrage. In defiance, some people cut the seat belts from their car. Others filed lawsuits against the new mandate. In Massachusetts, a group called the Crusade against Seat Belts gathered enough signatures to get a referendum on the ballot. As late as 1986, only 17 percent of Americans regularly wore a seat belt, and the vast majority objected to laws mandating their use. Widespread opposition to seat belt laws continued for another decade. In hindsight, the long road to seat belt adoption is a tragic story. The reluctance to change cost tens of thousands of lives.¹

Fast‐forward to 2020; this same story ...