Is there a Sunk Cost Effect in Committed Relationships?

The sunk cost effect occurs when a prior investment in one option leads to a continuous investment in that option, despite not being the best decision. The aim of the present paper was to study the role of the sunk cost effect in committed relationships. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 902) were presented with an unhappy relationship scenario in which they needed to make a choice: to stay or end the relationship. Results showed that the likelihood of participants staying in the relationship was higher when money and effort, but not time, had been previously invested in that relationship. In Experiment 2, the time investment was manipulated and the sunk cost was evaluated using a different methodology. Specifically, instead of having a dichotomous decision, participants (N = 275) choose how much time they would be willing to invest in the relationship. Results revealed a sunk time effect, that is, participants were willing to invest more time in a relationship in which more time had already been invested.     

Sunk Cost and Commitment to Dates Arranged Online

The influence of prior, irretrievable, investment (sunk cost) on commitment to a date arranged online was investigated. Participants were recruited from an undergraduate population. There were 145 participants (86 female) with a mean age of 19.42 years. Participants took part in a computer simulation of the process of arranging a date online. Participants invested one of five amounts of sunk cost into this process. Participants were then presented with the choice of attending the date arranged online or attending a (superior) blind date. Participants chose how much time that they wanted to commit to the (inferior) date arranged online. Results revealed a significant sunk cost effect (p = 0.003). The implications of the sunk cost effect having an influence over human relationships are discussed.     

Sunk Cost,Emotion, and Commitment to Education

The influence of prior, irretrievable, investment (sunk cost) on commitment to a course of education was investigated. The moderating effects of the emotions of anger and fear over this commitment decision were also investigated. A total of 425 participants (214 male) with a mean age of 19.92 years were recruited from an undergraduate population. A computer program simulated the process of arranging to undertake a course of education. Participants were induced to feel either anger or fear and, then, invested one of three amounts of sunk cost (under budget, on budget, or over budget) to signing up for a course. Participants then decided how much time they wished to commit to this course or to an alternative, identical course with a better chance of success. Results revealed a significant sunk cost effect of prior investment on commitment to a course of education. Results also revealed that anger increased the magnitude of this sunk cost effect. Results did not reveal any effect of fear on the sunk cost effect. Theoretical implications and practical applications were discussed.     

The sunk cost effect with pigeons: some determinants of decisions about persistence

The sunk cost effect occurs when an individual persists following an initial investment, even when persisting is costly in the long run. The current study used a laboratory model of the sunk cost effect. Two response alternatives were available: Pigeons could persist by responding on a schedule key with mixed ratio requirements, or escape by responding on a second key. In Experiment 1, mean response requirements for persistence and escape were varied across conditions. Pigeons persisted (committing the sunk cost error) when persisting increased the mean response requirement only slightly but not when persisting was sufficiently nonoptimal. Experiment 2 explored more systematically combinations of ratios and probabilities assigned to the schedule key. Persistence varied with the ratio of the mean global response requirements for persistence and escape. In Experiment 3, transitions between ratios were signaled. This reduced nonoptimal persistence, and produced some instances of a reverse sunk cost error--escaping when persistence was optimal. In Experiment 4, it was optimal to escape after the second-smallest ratio ever presented. Pigeons escaped at approximately the optimal juncture, especially in conditions with added signals. Overall, this series of experiments suggests that the sunk cost error may arise in part because persistence is the default behavioral strategy in situations where the contingencies for escape and persistence are insufficiently disparate and/or it is relatively difficult to discriminate when to escape. The study also demonstrates the utility of animal models of complex decision making situations.     

Recognition and recall performance both benefit from the production effect with content-specific information

Two experiments assessed how reading aloud versus reading silently would benefit recognition and recall performance of content-specific vocabulary (i.e., the production effect). Participants studied 30 terms from an American history curriculum by reading half of the vocabulary aloud, while the remaining words were read silently. After a brief distractor task, they completed a recognition memory test (Experiment 1) or a recall memory test (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed a benefit for reading aloud. Recognition performance showed a 22% performance advantage, while recall performance showed a smaller advantage for the words read aloud (8% benefit). The vast majority of participants in both experiments showed a memory advantage for those words that were studied aloud versus those read silently (88% of participants in Experiment 1 and 67% of individuals in Experiment 2). Implications for educational settings are considered.

Attempts to improve student performance have been manifested in various forms; however, recent developments in cognitive psychology have a great deal to offer educators and students regarding instruction and learning. Studies suggest that educators and cognitive psychologists ought to approach educational research as an interdisciplinary endeavor. Through this collaborative relationship, those who teach could improve their understanding of the science of learning, while researchers extend theoretical research to practical, classroom applications for the benefit of students and teachers.     

Detrended windowed (lag one) autocorrelation: A new method for distinguishing between event-based and emergent timing

Previous research on route directions largely considers the case when a knowledgeable route-giver conveys accurate information. In the real world, however, route information is sometimes inaccurate, and directions can lead navigators astray. We explored how participants respond to route directions containing ambiguities between landmarks and turn directions, forcing reliance on one or the other. In three experiments, participants read route directions (e.g., To get to the metro station, take a right at the pharmacy) and then selected from destinations on a map. Critically, in half of the trials the landmark (pharmacy) and turn (right) directions were conflicting, such that the participant had to make a decision under conditions of uncertainty; under these conditions, we measured whether participants preferentially relied upon landmark- versus direction-based strategies. Across the three experiments, participants were either provided no information regarding the source of directions (Experiment 1), or told that the source of directions was a GPS device (Experiment 2), or a human (Experiment 3). Without information regarding the source of directions, participants generally relied on landmarks or turn information under conditions of ambiguity; in contrast, with a GPS source participants relied primarily on turn information, and with a human source on landmark information. Results were robust across gender and individual differences in spatial preference. We discuss these results within the context of spatial decision-making theory and consider implications for the design and development of landmark-inclusive navigation systems.     

Blind to Bias? Young Children Do Not Anticipate that Sunk Costs Lead to Irrational Choices

Young children anticipate that others act rationally in light of their beliefs and desires, and environmental constraints. However, little is known about whether children anticipate others’ irrational choices. We investigated young children's ability to predict that sunk costs can lead to irrational choices. Across four experiments, 5- to 6-year-olds (total N = 185) and adults (total N = 117) judged which of two identical objects an agent would keep, one obtained at a high cost or one obtained at a low cost. In Experiment 1, adults predicted that the agent would choose the high-cost object over the low-cost one, whereas children responded at chance. Experiment 2 replicated these findings in children, but also included another condition which showed they were sensitive to future costs. They predicted that an agent would be more likely to seek out a low-cost item than a high-cost item. Experiments 3 and 4 then found that children do not anticipate the sunk cost bias in first person scenarios, or in interpersonal sunk cost scenarios, where costs are sunk by others. Taken together, our findings suggest that young children may struggle to understand and predict irrational behavior. The findings also reveal an asymmetry between how they consider sunk costs and future costs in understanding actions. We propose that this asymmetry might arise because children do not consider sunk costs as wasted.     

Weighing the past and the future in decision making

Prior irreversible investments of money, time, or effort referred to as sunk costs frequently lead to decisions to continue a chosen course of action despite that this is irrational. With the aim of demonstrating that such escalation of commitment is a special case of a more general phenomenon, two experiments were carried out employing undergraduates as participants. Experiment 1 showed for fictitious personal and business investment scenarios that both prior losses and gains (sunk outcomes) affected choices to continue or discontinue the investment. In Experiment 2 the effect of sunk outcomes was reduced although not eliminated by a monetary bonus that in one condition depended on the future outcomes of the second gamble in two-stage gambles, in another condition on the future returns in personal investment scenarios. In support of a more inclusive theory subsuming escalation of commitment, the decisions were affected by both past and future outcomes and both gains and losses.     

Inaction inertia, the sunk cost effect, and handedness: Avoiding the losses of past decisions

Strength of handedness, or the degree to which an individual prefers to use a single hand to perform various tasks, is a neurological marker for brain organization and has been shown to be linked to episodic memory, attribute framing, and anchoring, as well as other domains and tasks. The present work explores the relationship of handedness to both inaction inertia (the inclination to resist an action after previously bypassing a similar action) as well as to the sunk cost effect (the tendency to continue to engage in a behavior after an initial investment of time or money has been made). In Experiment 1, mixed-handers displayed a larger inaction inertia effect than strong-handers. In Experiment 2, they displayed a larger sunk cost effect than strong-handers. Experiments 3 and 4 extended the sunk cost finding into a different domain and explored how mixed- and strong-handers react to additional information designed to increase the comparative advantage of terminating, rather than continuing, a failed project. Overall, we found that mixed-handers were more likely to show inertia effects because of an increased aversion to losses. The results of Experiment 4 suggest that, when provided with additional information that made it clear that continuing a project would be a greater loss than terminating it, mixed-handers no longer showed a larger sunk cost effect than strong-handers, highlighting the importance of carefully considering exactly how sunk cost scenarios are worded and providing additional information on how mixed- and strong-handers differ in belief updating.     

Justice at any cost? The impact of cost–benefit salience on criminal punishment judgments

This study investigated the effect of cost–benefit salience on simulated criminal punishment judgments. In two vignette‐based survey experiments, we sought to identify how the salience of decision costs influences laypeople's punishment judgments. In both experiments (N₁ = 109; N₂ = 398), undergraduate participants made sentencing judgments with and without explicit information about the direct, material costs of incarceration. Using a within‐subjects design, Experiment 1 revealed that increasing the salience of incarceration costs mitigated punishments. However, when costs were not made salient, punishments were no lower than those made when the costs were externalized (i.e., paid by a third party). Experiment 2 showed the same pattern using a between‐subjects design. We conclude that, when laypeople formulate sentencing attitudes without exposure to the costs of the punishment, they are prone to discount those costs, behaving as if punishment is societally cost‐free. However, when cost information is salient, they utilize it, suggesting the operation of a genuine, albeit labile, punishment preference. We discuss the implications of these findings for psychological theories of decision making and for sentencing policy, including the degree of transparency about the relevant costs of incarceration during the decision process.     

沉没成本效应的产生根源与影响因素

沉没成本效应是指决策者的决策行为因受沉没成本影响而产生的一种非理性决策现象。针对这一决策偏差的产生根源,研究者从认知、动机和神经三个角度提出了解释。沉没成本效应的影响因素包括沉没成本特性、情境因素、个体差异和文化差异等。基于先前研究存在的问题和不足,沉没成本效应的未来研究应着眼于改进研究方法,探究产生根源,关注行为沉没成本和加强应用研究。     

The influence of linguistic labels on source‐monitoring decisions

Three studies explored the extent to which people use various object features, including linguistic label, shape, and category membership, to make decisions about the source of their memories. To isolate the influence of each feature, we used items that were related in the following four ways: as synonyms, as similar in shape and category membership, as homographs, or as unrelated. Participants read sentences and either saw or imagined a picture of the critical word's referent. Experiment 1 showed that participants committed more source errors for synonyms (e.g., rabbit and bunny) than for objects that were conceptually and perceptually similar (e.g., doughnut and bagel), which produced more errors than unrelated items. However, there was no effect of label, as people did not have more errors for homographs (e.g., baseball bat and flying bat) than unrelated items. In Experiment 2, presenting the critical word at study was not sufficient to lead people to use an item's label to make source decisions. However, Experiment 3 showed more source errors for homographs than unrelated pairs when semantic context was minimised at study, suggesting that people can use linguistic labels to make source decisions when other information is unavailable.     

Reevaluating the potency of the memory conformity effect

Witnesses sometimes report event details that are acquired solely from another witness. We reevaluated the potency of this memory conformity effect. After viewing a crime video, some participants learned about nonwitnessed details via discussion (dyad group), reading another participant’s report (read group), or watching another version of the video (both-video group). In Experiment 1, these participants often reported nonwitnessed details, but on a source-judgment test most details were attributed primarily to the actual source rather than to the video. In addition, the dyad group was not more likely than the read or both-video groups to report nonwitnessed details. Participants in Experiment 2 were explicitly discouraged from providing details that were remembered from the secondary source only. These postwarning instructions substantially reduced the memory conformity effect, and a dyad group was not more likely than a read group to report nonwitnessed details. Encouraging source monitoring at test can reduce the negative consequences of co-witness collaboration.     

Lessons for future research: two experiments failed to reproduce a relationship between achievement motivation and autobiographical memory distortion

ABSTRACT

Previous research (Sharman & Calacouris, 2010. Motivated imagination inflation: Implicit and explicit motives predict imagination inflation for achievement and affiliation events. Experimental Psychology, 57, 77–82) found that participants’ achievement-motivation was associated with the inflation of memory and confidence for unlikely achievement-related events in childhood. Similarly, other research has shown correlations between achievement motivation and grade inflation. In the current studies, we experimentally investigate the effect of false feedback and achievement-motivation on memory distortion for an unlikely childhood event (e.g. inventing an important device). In Experiment 1, we found that false feedback did have an effect, but contrary to previous research, self-reported achievement-motivation was not a statistically significant correlate of memory distortion. In Experiment 2, we again found a main effect for false feedback, no main effect of motivation, and an interaction. Both Experiments did not find, as earlier research had, a significant relationship between achievement-motivation and achievement-related memory distortion. We suggest others use different methods to ours when attempting to demonstrate a causal relationship between motivation and false memories.     

Sunk Cost and Commitment to Medical Treatment

The influence of prior, irretrievable, investment (sunk cost) on commitment to medical treatment was investigated. Three studies were run investigating the influence of sunk cost in the form of money, time, and effort. A total of 637 participants (314 male) with a mean age of 19.58 years were recruited from an undergraduate population. A computer program simulated the process of arranging a course of physiotherapy. Participants invested one of three amounts of sunk cost (under budget, on budget, or over budget) into arranging sessions with a chiropractor. Participants then decided how much time they wished to commit to these chiropractor sessions or to an alternative treatment with a better chance of success. Results revealed a significant effect of invested money, a significant effect of invested effort, but no effect of invested time. Invested money produced a sunk cost effect, while invested effort appeared to exert influence via cognitive dissonance. The implications for healthcare decision-making are discussed.     

The sunk cost effect in pigeons and humans

The sunk cost effect is the increased tendency to persist in an endeavor once an investment of money, effort, or time has been made. To date, humans are the only animal in which this effect has been observed unambiguously. We developed a behavior-analytic model of the sunk cost effect to explore the potential for this behavior in pigeons as well as in humans. Each trial started out with a short expected ratio, but on some trials assumed a longer expected ratio part way through the trial. Subjects had the (usually preferable) option of "escaping" the trial if the longer expected ratio had come into effect in order to bring on a new trial that again had a short expected ratio. In Experiments 1 through 3, we manipulated two independent variables that we hypothesized would affect the pigeons' ability to discriminate the increase in the expected ratio within a trial: (a) the presence or absence of stimuli that signal an increase in the expected ratio, and (b) the severity of the increase in the expected ratio. We found that the pigeons were most likely to persist nonoptimally through the longer expected ratios when stimulus changes were absent and when the increase in the expected ratio was less severe. Experiment 4 employed a similar procedure with human subjects that manipulated only the severity of the increase in the expected ratio and found a result similar to that of the pigeon experiment. In Experiment 5, we tested the hypothesis that a particular history of reinforcement would induce pigeons to persist through the longer expected ratios; the results suggested instead that the history of reinforcement caused the pigeons to persist less compared to pigeons that did not have that history.     

The Effects of Goal Distance and Value in Escalation of Commitment

Escalation of commitment describes individuals’ tendencies to spend resources beyond the point of rationality in order to persist in a chosen course of action, and most believe that sunk cost is the primary cause. However, it has been noted that sunk costs are confounded with progress made toward a goal, and that sunk costs do not affect individuals’ tendencies to escalate as all economic information is ignored in pursuit of the goal. Thus, the apparent escalation tendency may be a consequence of goal proximity instead of sunk costs. In Experiment 1, I show that individuals’ tendencies to escalate reflect the goal-gradient effect after controlling for the sunk costs. Experiment 2 provides a psychological process model to explain why goal-gradient influences individuals’ tendencies to escalate commitment by demonstrating that as individuals progress toward their goal, they exaggerate the value difference between the object that they are pursuing and the object that they are not pursuing. This perceived value difference, in turn, influences individuals’ tendencies to commit escalation of commitment. Results suggest a new interpretation for escalation of commitment and new approaches to guiding people to avoid it.     

The influence of clause order,congruency, and probability on the processing of conditionals

Conditional information can be equally asserted in the forms if p, then q (e.g., “if I am ill, I will miss work tomorrow”) and q, if p (e.g., “I will miss work tomorrow, if I am ill”). While this type of clause order manipulation has previously been found to have no influence on the ultimate conclusions participants draw from conditional rules, we used self-paced reading to examine how it affects the real time incremental processing of everyday conditional statements. Experiment 1 revealed that clause order interacts with presuppositional congruency as readers hypothetically represent counterfactual statements. When if p, then q counterfactuals contained a presupposition that was incongruent with prior context, these statements took longer to read than when the presupposition was congruent, but for q, if p conditionals there was no such congruency effect. Experiment 2 revealed that reading times were influenced by the subjective probability of an indicative conditional regardless of clause order, with a penalty observed for low-probability statements relative to high-probability statements in both conditional clause orders. These data reveal a dissociation whereby clause order mediates the effect of suppositional congruency on reading times, but does not mediate the effect of subjective probability.