Abstract

Background

Cognitive resources are the most scarce and least audited input in knowledge work. The behavioural literature has long established that habitual, automated patterns conserve these resources by reducing the cognitive load of routine action. What the literature has not adequately addressed is that some automated patterns cost more than they save — and that this cost compounds when the patterns persist in contexts where they no longer fit.

Gap

Three literatures address parts of this problem in isolation. Automaticity and dual-process research describes how defaults form. Outcome-devaluation work demonstrates that habitual behaviour persists even when the outcome is no longer wanted. Clinical literature on early maladaptive schemas describes the same persistence in the language of personality and trauma. No existing synthesis carries this construct out of clinical and individual frames into adult, non-clinical, organisational contexts — where the cumulative cost is most consequential.

Contribution

This paper proposes maladaptive defaults as a synthesising construct: automated patterns of behaviour, thought, or interpretation that were adaptive in the context of their formation, have become outcome-insensitive under changed conditions, and now impose a cognitive cost that exceeds their functional return.

Framework

We present a two-part model. Figure 1 is a taxonomy of defaults along two axes — cognitive cost of running the default, and fit with current goals and context — yielding four diagnostic categories: efficient defaults, costly defaults, stale defaults, and maladaptive defaults. Figure 2 is a life-cycle model showing how defaults migrate from adaptive formation to maladaptive entrenchment, with three intervention points (See, Interrupt, Rebuild) and an asymmetric cost curve.

Implication

Most behaviour-change interventions in organisations target the symptom layer — performance, motivation, or wellbeing — rather than the default layer that produces these symptoms. The framework allows leaders, coaches, and organisational designers to diagnose which defaults are running, what they cost, and where intervention is most likely to succeed. The cost of behaviour change is concentrated in the first interruptions, not the long-term rebuild — a finding that reframes both individual coaching and organisational L&D investment.