Alexander T. Jackson, Satoris S. Howes, Edgar E. Kausel, Michael E. Young, Megan E. Loftis
Abstract
Research on escalation of commitment has predominantly been studied in the context of a single decision without consideration for the psychological consequences of escalating. This study sought to examine (a) the extent to which people escalate their commitment to a failing course of action in a sequential decision-making task, (b) confidence and anger as psychological consequences of escalation of commitment, and (c) the reciprocal relationship between escalation of commitment and confidence and anger. Participants were 110 undergraduate students who completed a series of investment decisions regarding a failing endeavor. Results revealed that although a high proportion of individuals escalate through all decisions, the extent to which they escalated decreased with each decision as they were less willing to invest money in the project. Furthermore, as participants escalated, confidence in one's decision decreased and anger increased. Lastly, the analyses revealed that the relationship between escalation and confidence is reciprocal. Escalation was negatively associated with confidence, and confidence predicted escalation in the subsequent decision. These results highlight the importance of considering both the determinants and psychological consequences of escalation of commitment.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 25 July 2019.
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#7,571,329
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#129,727
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#372
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Altmetric has tracked 23,090,520 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 44th percentile – i.e., 44% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 30,468 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 62% of its peers.
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