Cognitive inertia

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Cognitive inertia is the tendency for a particular orientation in how an individual thinks about an issue, belief, or strategy to resist change. Clinical and neuroscientific literature often defines it as a lack of motivation to generate distinct cognitive processes needed to attend to a problem or issue. The physics term inertia emphasizes the rigidity and resistance to change in the method of cognitive processing that has been used for a significant amount of time. Commonly confused with belief perseverance, cognitive inertia is the perseverance of how one interprets information, not the perseverance of the belief itself. - Wikipedia

The pro-independence parties must get together! The independence movement must unite! Why can’t the parties get around the table and agree on a common strategy?

How often do we hear pleas like the above? I know I see such things daily. Often several times in one day. I find it decidedly irritating because I know that this can never happen other than, perhaps, when there is a single-issue campaign, e.g., the Yes campaign in its early phase. Even then, it was not unity in the sense of amalgamation. The political parties didn’t unite. Members of those parties placed themselves under the Yes umbrella. Even under the anti-independence Better Together banner, the ‘unity’ was informal.

The 2014 referendum was an extraordinary event, but even in those very special circumstances, the kind of ‘unity’ people are pleading for didn’t happen. What chance, then, that such ‘unity’ might be achieved when there is an election in the offing—the time when political parties are most protective of their distinct identities?

Just as people can be hesitant about adopting new technology, so they can be averse to new ideas. People have got the ‘work together’ notion into their heads and they just keep on repeating that without questioning it. If everybody is saying ‘work together’ and you are saying ‘there is a better way’, you are saying something different from what everybody else is saying. So, you’re the outlier who can be safely ignored.

Back in August 2023, I published an article titled “The New Thinking”, which was quite well received and has often been referenced by Professor Alf Baird and others. Lately, I have been more concerned about the old thinking, as in the above example, and in the resistance to fresh perspectives and novel ideas, which is the corollary of cognitive inertia.

Another example of cognitive inertia and resistance to new thinking is found in the widespread conviction that the process by which we restore Scotland’s independence must be approved, overseen, and at least partially managed by the British state or its agencies. That a new referendum must be ‘legal and constitutional’ in terms of UK law and the UK’s unwritten constitution was a mantra endlessly repeated by Nicola Sturgeon when she was First Minister. It is the core of what I have termed the Sturgeon doctrine. Though it was a favourite of Sturgeon’s, the phrase had been around before the 2014 referendum. It is part of the old thinking and the customary rationalisation for resistance to new thinking on the constitutional issue.

Here we are in 2026, and the dominant groupthink within the independence movement is that which developed in the four years between the 2011 election and a period of four or five months subsequent to the 2014 referendum. The SNP leadership in particular became locked in a culture of uncritical conformity that persists to this day, discouraging creativity and individual responsibility.

The old thinking is that the nominally pro-independence parties should get together to formulate a strategy and design a campaign. The new thinking is that the strategy and the campaign should be the common connection that the parties ‘unite’ around. It should be a pre-existing plan that they all connect to without necessarily connecting with any rival party. This is unity of purpose. Which, ironically, is actually more like the ‘unity’ of the Yes campaign for the 2014 referendum than the form of ‘unity’ now being insisted upon.

Insisting on something impossible as a condition for progress means there will be no progress. It provides a perfect excuse for those who, for one reason or another, have no desire to make progress.

Similarly, the old thinking of the Sturgeon doctrine, which pervades Scotland’s nominally pro-independence political elite, effectively shuts out the new thinking which is centred around the sovereign people of Scotland, Scots law, and the Scottish constitutional tradition rather than Westminster and the infinitely manipulable UK constitution.

These are but two examples. The independence movement as a whole—not excluding the nominally pro-independence parties and politicians—is riddled with and addled by outdated precepts and obsolete perspectives. It is powerfully averse to new thinking. Yes! There is a great deal of new thinking on policy matters such as currency and land reform. But on the constitutional issue there is very little, and what new thinking there is struggles to be heard.

If you are seeking an explanation for the lack of progress in Scotland’s cause over the last eleven years or so, the concept of cognitive inertia might be useful.