14.1 Causes of Resistance and Oreg's Four Neural Factors
Key Takeaways
- Oreg suggests four neural factors influencing resistance: routine seeking, emotional reaction to forced change, cognitive rigidity and short-term focus
- Routine seeking reflects the effort of changing established mental maps and habits, often raising stress through learning dips and reduced cognitive functioning
- Emotional reaction to forced change removes the sense of choice, a key element of the SCARF model
- Cognitive rigidity is sticking to existing views and not believing you can learn, which is the opposite of a growth mindset
- Short-term focus is the cognitive tendency to overlook rewards the further away they are
Neuroscience provides useful insights into why our brains do not like change. Oreg (2003) suggests there are four key neural factors which influence resistance, and CM3 notes these are applicable across diverse contexts and types of change.
The four neural factors
Routine seeking
Our brains work to create mental maps, forming habits (behaviours). These take time and effort to change. Often, they increase stress levels as we experience learning dips, low motivation or reduced cognitive functionality.
This is the most mechanical of the four. Habits are efficient precisely because they run without conscious effort; replacing one costs conscious attention, which is a limited resource. The connection CM3 draws to the learning dip is important — routine seeking is not stubbornness but the accurate anticipation of a real cost.
It connects to Rock's observation that people operate on the basis of mental maps which usually change only through moments of insight.
Emotional reaction to forced change
Forced change takes away our sense of choice, a key element of the SCARF model. Choice plays a big role in our ownership and willingness to change.
The SCARF element is autonomy. This factor is the clearest argument for co-design in the whole syllabus: resistance is generated by the forcing, independently of the content of the change. The same change offered with genuine choice about implementation provokes a materially weaker reaction than the same change imposed.
It also explains a pattern change managers see constantly — a group resisting a change they would have chosen themselves, because they did not choose it.
Cognitive rigidity
People tend to stick to the views that they already have. Individuals are less willing to adapt to new situations or do not believe they can learn. This is the opposite of a growth mindset.
CM3 makes the link to Dweck explicit. Cognitive rigidity has two components: sticking to existing views, and not believing you can learn. The second is the more damaging in change, because it produces avoidance rather than argument. Someone who believes they are too old to learn a new system will not debate the system; they will find reasons to avoid situations that expose them.
The practical marker: statements about the self rather than the change. "This system is badly designed" is an argument. "I'm too old to learn something new and I'll probably be bad at it" is cognitive rigidity.
Short-term focus
Our cognitive tendency to overlook rewards the further away they are. CM3's examples: the urge to spend as we earn over saving for a rainy day, or performance metrics that drive short term (a sales target) over long term (a collaborative employee culture) outcomes.
Change has an inherently unfavourable time profile: the costs — disruption, learning, effort — are immediate and certain, while the benefits are distant and probabilistic. Short-term focus means the brain discounts the distant benefits, so even a change with an excellent long-run case can feel like a bad deal.
The second example is worth noting because it locates the problem in the organisation rather than the individual. Metrics that reward short-term outcomes institutionalise short-term focus, which returns to the sponsor's responsibility to align reward systems and Carolyn Taylor's point about systems.
Matching interventions to the factor
The four factors have genuinely different remedies, which is what makes the diagnosis worth making:
| Factor | What actually helps |
|---|---|
| Routine seeking | Practice time, phased habit change, temporary support, honest acknowledgement of the learning dip |
| Emotional reaction to forced change | Restore choice wherever it exists — co-design, options on implementation, involvement in decisions |
| Cognitive rigidity | Growth-mindset framing, safe practice, early small successes, peers who have made the transition |
| Short-term focus | Bring benefits forward — short-term wins, visible early results, and interim rewards that make the near term worth it |
Note how badly a single generic "communicate the benefits" response serves this list. It addresses none of the four directly. Someone stuck in routine seeking needs practice, not persuasion; someone reacting to forced change needs choice, not explanation; someone with cognitive rigidity needs a safe early success, not an argument; and someone with short-term focus needs the reward moved closer, not described more vividly.
Resistance as information
CM3's broader framing, developed in the next section, is that resistance can be helpful. Read through Oreg, that makes sense: each of the four factors is a signal about a real cost the change imposes. Routine seeking signals that the habit change has been underestimated. Reaction to forced change signals that autonomy has been removed unnecessarily. Cognitive rigidity signals that psychological safety is too low for people to risk being bad at something. Short-term focus signals that the near-term experience of the change is worse than has been acknowledged.
Treated as information rather than obstruction, each of those signals improves the change.
An employee facing a system change says "I'm too old to pick this up and I'll only be bad at it, so there's no point trying." Which of Oreg's four neural factors does this illustrate?
Which element of the SCARF model does Oreg's emotional reaction to forced change most directly threaten?
How does CM3 characterise short-term focus as a neural factor in resistance?