Which color car would you buy for yourself? Which color would you paint your house with? Which is your favorite restaurant? What would you prefer for dessert? These are probably some easy-to-handle questions. Let's get to some difficult choices now. How do you plan to invest the surplus from your enterprise this year? What would you prefer - a treasury bond, a low-risk mutual investment plan, a high-risk but handsome return plan, or a moderate-risk allotment of your portfolio? Naturally, this set of queries requires us to think more over the available options, as compared to the choice we could have made in choosing our favorite colors! How do you think we come to make a final decision in this second set of questions? It is observed that we generally tend to make such difficult decisions by our preferences, which may not always be objective enough, or rational either. You may even remember making up your mind on an insurance plan, not because you had carefully studied and opted for it, but rather because that was the most-preferred choice, or the status quo. If yes, then let us find out what this status quo bias is all about. It is a preference given to the present state of affairs, or a natural bias towards the current or previous decision. A given standard is accepted to be the reference point. Any deviation from this point is considered to be a loss or an unwanted risk. Thus, there is a tendency to prefer the existing and default options, which is the status quo bias. Loss aversion is understood to be a primary reason behind having a status quo bias. When confronted with a choice, individuals go for an option that is less likely to result into a loss. William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser brought in the concept of 'status quo bias' through their work 'Status Quo Bias in Decision Making', published in the 'Journal of Risk and Uncertainty' in 1988. They presented the concept with the help of a questionnaire. Individuals were given decision-making problems, with and without a pre-existent status quo position. This means that, certain choices were labeled as 'status quo' choices in the questionnaire. It was found that people were inclined towards going with the status quo more. According to the study, 'the status quo bias is best viewed as a deeply rooted decision-making practice, stemming partly from a mental illusion and partly from psychological inclination'. Why such biases occur explains that it is not something wrong, in fact, an obvious way of thought. Transaction costs is given as an important reason. For example, if changing my cell phone service provider takes up more dollars or more efforts, I would prefer staying happy with the current provider, even if other providers are better. Another cause behind a prejudice is the tendency to procrastinate and delay decisions, leaving individuals with the status quo by default. The bias about status quo is believed to have either of the two attributes: 1. It is an option that a person is currently choosing, or 2. It is the option that a person will end up with, if he or she does not actively make a choice. There can be, of course, a situation where both these attributes are present. The degree of the bias that one has depends on many factors, one of them being the number of alternatives that are present. If an individual's preference for a particular alternative is strong, naturally, the bias is weaker. On the contrary, with an increasing number of choices, the relative bias for status quo is stronger.