Escalation of Commitment(承诺升级)

Escalation of commitment

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Escalation of commitment refers to a pattern of behavior in which an individual or group will continue to rationalize their decisions, actions, and investments when faced with increasingly negative outcomes rather than alter their course. Their decisions are irrational in their current context but in alignment with decisions and actions previously made, and they can be influenced by a variety of determinants and contexts. The dilemmas leading up to such decisions usually involve the prior choices no longer working or causing personal or group losses. While there are options to either cease current actions or continue on with them, neither has clear outcomes or is the obvious choice.^[1] Escalation of commitment then occurs when persistence is chosen over withdrawal.

The term describes poor decision-making in business, politics, and gambling and is frequently used in psychology and sociology. In the latter, it is also referred to as “irrational escalation", "irrational escalation of commitment" or "commitment bias". Examples of this are frequently seen when parties engage in a bidding war; the bidders can end up paying much more than the object is worth to justify the initial expenses associated with bidding (such as research), as well as part of a competitive instinct.

The term has also been used to describe the United States commitment to military conflicts including Vietnam in the 1960s - 1970s and in Iraq in the 2000s, where sunk costs in terms of dollars spent and lives lost were used to justify continued involvement.^[2] The related term sunk cost fallacy has been used byfinanciers and behavioral scientists to describe the phenomenon where people justify increased investment of money, time, lives, etc. in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the cost, starting today, of continuing the decision outweighs the expected benefit. The phenomenon and the sentiment underlying it are reflected in such proverbial images as "Throwing good money after bad" or "In for a penny, in for a pound".

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment