Escalation of Commitment to a Losing Course of Action

The sunk cost fallacy and other tricks of the mind

Image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

In 1976, a study was published that appeared to construct a new concept in the literature of social psychology. The purpose of this study was to try and find out why, when we find ourselves trapped in a situation we don’t like or is harmful, rather than leaving or changing this, we often double down our efforts and become ever more fervent about why we need to up a commitment that is not doing us any good, and may in fact, be harmful.

Some situations will be familiar to us all. Staying in a bad marriage, ignoring mounds of unpaid bills; even something small like laughing at a joke that isn’t funny, but was told to you by your boss are all examples of following through on something where hanging in there is not really the best option for an individual, but is deemed necessary at the time.

Escalating commitment, which is sometimes referred to as commitment bias is defined as our choice to remain committed to some behavior or situation that may not have desirable outcomes, especially if we feel we are being observed by others.    

An example of this can be seen in students attending university who have already picked out a future career path and have already committed time and effort into this and told their family and friends, but as a result of say, taking an unrelated subject, suddenly find that their interest lies elsewhere. If they feel that “everyone already knows” that “x” was their passion, they may feel obligated to continue along their preset course even if this is not the sort of work they want to do anymore.

And we can all have some empathy for those transgender people who suicide, because even after all the surgeries and hormones they finally reach a point where, after realizing that there is no way to change sex and that not everyone they meet is going to go along with their delusional thinking, they despair.

The ultimate in commitment bias would have to be those who endure real pain and suffering because of the choices they made; choices that have mutilated their bodies and left them functionally stunted and in pain.

A refusal to change can compromise our choices

It becomes impossible to make good decisions when we restrict ourselves to aligning our future behavior with our past behavior. This is particularly true when previous choices have been bad choices. It is incredibly adaptive to be able to revalue what we have done in the light of some new insight into why we did what we did at an earlier point in time.

It is a cause for concern when those in power escalate their commitment to an unfavorable course of action as this can also be a part of an attempt to maintain or gain a higher place in a social hierarchy. Politicians do this all the time.

Rational decision making can become conflated with consistency, so we try to keep things the same as much as possible, even if doing so makes no sense.

Hanging on to beliefs or actions that would be better changed is partly a way to justify our stance to ourselves and to others, especially to anyone who is confronting us.

Rational people grow and change in response to new information

Facing the consequences of bad decisions or unfavorable outcomes is considered a reasonable thing for adults to do. It is one of the tasks of parenting our children to teach them the consequences of their actions. Those in the grip of commitment bias find they do the opposite of facing the consequences; they may display cognitive dissonance instead, by attempting to convince themselves and others that the unfavorable outcome was not only not as bad as it seemed but was actually the expected result.

The human brain is expert in rationalizing and justifying its choices and, rather than admit they were wrong or made a bad choice, many people work to change their attitude to the outcome. The bigger the mistake, the louder people can become in telling themselves that it wasn’t so bad really. Have you ever had buyer’s remorse, but found reasons why your choice was actually better than it was? That is escalating commitment in action.

Consistency has been shown to be very important to people and so shifting your attitude to “it really wasn’t as bad as it seems” is a motivator for commitment bias. Eliminating inconsistency in the quest to ease our discomfort becomes a goal in itself.

As social animals, we all care, not just about how we feel about ourselves, but how we are perceived by others. “Saving face” appears to be a universal feature in humans, so we may spend time and effort in convincing others that rather than having made a bad choice, in the end for reasons that are not explained or clear, in the long run, this will turn out to be beneficial. Doing this may involve focusing on any information that supports a decision, while at the same time deliberately ignoring any factors that are contrary to our chosen beliefs.

It may feel important to remain committed to an initial decision simply to avoid appearing irrational or incompetent by others.

We can change what we think about any issue

Dismantling a bias can be the first step of escaping from a commitment that is harmful. We can learn from our mistakes and change our behavior accordingly, if we exit a state of autopilot that we suspect we may have fallen into.

Dr. Robert Cialdini has devised a list he calls his Six Principles of Persuasion. One of these, consistency, underpins commitment bias. This is stunningly simple and very effective. It works by getting others to make some small commitment at the start, which will turn into a big commitment later on. An example of this could be getting all employees to put their pronouns in their email signatures, which is a precursor for women being required to share their changing rooms and rest rooms with biological males and/or to pretend that trans women are not men.

Not going with the flow can be perilous, but it can also be a necessary first step. Realizing that yes, others may not be supportive of your change of beliefs is important, but it is just as true that people will value you if you admit that you made a mistake and have changed your opinion or behavior. Rather than focusing on what others may think about you and instead paying attention to the good that will come from your change and growth can be truly empowering.

Returning to the paper referred to at the beginning of this post, the purpose of this research was to see what happened when participants were placed in the “negative outcomes” side as opposed to those who were placed in the “positive outcomes” side of the ledger. None of the participants were aware that the experimenters deliberately manipulated the consequences of their decisions.

Needless to say, all those who did well were not the subjects who were examined; the only results that counted (for the researchers) were those who had “failed”. The researchers found that this group universally attempted to justify their choice, not just to the examiner, but to themselves as well.

The study concluded that the sources of self-justification were linked to a desire to attempt to demonstrate rationality to others or to prove to others that their error was really the correct decision over a longer-term perspective, as well as restoring consistency between the consequences of their actions and a self-concept of rational decision making.  

Literature on forced compliance studies was used as a basis for the studies on escalating commitment as they are about what happens when we are forced to behave in a way that we do not personally endorse. Soldiers drafted into an unpopular war and school children sitting quietly at their desks all day are but two of numerous examples of forced compliance that should be familiar to all of us.

Gender ideology is escalating commitment to the creation of harm

A belief in gender ideology is forced compliance on steroids. No person is ever born in the wrong body, there is no gendered soul that is not aligned with our physical reality and no mammal can change sex.

Trans right allies (TRAs) are the compelled speech global police force of today. Many of them are also perfect examples of escalating commitment as despite the mountain of evidence of the physical and mental harms of transgenderism, they are always frantically doubling down on bullying and abusing those of us who know they are misguided at best and complicit in the harm of others at worst.

Part of their reluctance to examine their choices are due to the sunk cost fallacy. Sunk cost fallacy is a form of commitment bias. It refers to how we feel the need to follow through with something once we’ve invested time and/or money into it. Two examples of the sunk cost fallacy are continuing to pay for study you are no longer interested in pursuing and watching a movie you are not enjoying through to the end as you have already invested 30 minutes watching it.

Parents of so-called trans kids must be particularly burdened by this. They may have spent vast sums of family money on harmful and unnecessary medical care and faced opposition from wider family members and others opposed to “transing” children. How can they quit now, when they have already invested so much in their child?

Helen Joyce here speaks movingly about these parents and how their personal escalation of commitment means they can never afford to reverse course. How can they do this when the evidence of the harms they facilitated are sitting next to them on the sofa?

The Cass Review, the WPATH Files and the increasing voices of detransitioners provide ample evidence of the complete folly of the choice to identify as transgendered, particularly in the case of children. Escalating commitment to such a losing course of action only benefits those making a profit off the misery of other human beings. This particular bias can kill any hope of an optimized life.