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Escalating commitment (or escalation) refers to the tendency for decision makers to persist with failing courses of action. The present article first reviews evidence suggesting that escalation is determined, at least in part, by decision makers unwillingness to admit that their prior allocation of resources to the chosen course of action was in vain (the self-justification explanation). A distinction is drawn in the second part of the article between alternative (to self-justification) explanations of escalating commitment: Some are designed to replace self-justification, whereas others are intended to supplement self-justification, that is, to add explanatory power beyond that which can be accounted for by self-justification. There is little evidence that the replacement theories provide a better explanation than does self-justification: however, theories designed to supplement self-justification are likely to load to a more complete explanation. The article concludes by describing several research strategies that may lead to progress in explaining escalating commitment.
In the past 15 years, organizational and social psychologists, as well as economists, have showed renewed interest in the processes by which decision makers escalate their commitment to failing courses of action (Arkes & Blumer, 1985; Brockner & Rubin, 1985; Northcraft & Wolf, 1984; Staw, 1981; Teger, 1980; Thaler, 1980). The mechanisms underlying escalating commitment may offer explanations of such diverse behaviors as shown by people who wait for an inordinately long time for a bus to take them someplace to which they could have walked just as easily, the couple who persist in a souring romantic relationship, the organization that sticks with a failing venture, and the nation that finds itself "knee-deep in the big muddy" in an international conflict, such as the United States in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.
The defining features of escalating commitment situations have been described elsewhere (Brockner & Rubin, 1985; Staw, 1981). Very briefly, in all such instances decision makers allocate some resources--their money, time, even their self-identities--in the hope of attaining some goal or goals.
After having made an investment, however, the decision makers find themselves in "no man's land." That is, they receive negative feedback suggesting that, at the very least, they have not yet attained their goals; moreover, they are not certain that additional investments will be sufficient to bring about goal attainment....