Resistance to Change: A Social Psychological Perspective

Resistance to change has been a central topic in social psychology since the inception of the field. It has been addressed by theorists as diverse as Thorstein Veblen, William McDougall, Kurt Lewin, Leon Festinger, and William J. McGuire, among others. Decades of research show that people are resistant to changing beliefs that are logically or psychologically connected to systems of beliefs and values that are important to them (i.e., ideologies). In this article, I describe some of the studies that I and others have conducted on the role of political ideology and system justification motivation in fostering skepticism and resistance to scientific information about climate change.