The escalation of commitment in political decision-making groups: a social identity approach

Escalation situations are those in which some project or course of action has led to losses, but there is a possibility of achieving better outcomes by investing further time, money, or effort. Although this phenomenon has been studied in individuals, there has been little research which has examined it in groups. It was hypothesized that individuals stronger in social identity would be more likely to escalate their commitment to a failing project. Groups of subjects (half whose members strongly identified and half who weakly identified with their groups) were asked to play the role of a town council whose current objective was to invest money in construction of a playground that was met with many problems. The results showed that groups that were stronger in social identity escalated their commitment to the playground. The implications of the results are discussed, along with future directions for research.