The Weight of the Past: Sunk Costs, Escalation of Commitment, and the Limits of the Evidence

Abstract

A forward-looking decision-maker should ignore costs that cannot be recovered. A large be-

havioral literature nonetheless reports that prior, irrecoverable investments of money, time,

or effort push people to continue with courses of action they would not otherwise choose.

This paper reviews that literature with attention to both its strongest findings and its weakest

points. We separate the sunk cost effect (Arkes & Blumer, 1985) from escalation of commit-

ment, which adds personal responsibility for the original decision (Staw, 1976); summarize

laboratory, professional-sports, and entrepreneurial evidence (Staw & Hoang, 1995; Camerer

& Weber, 1999; Åstebro, Jeffrey, & Adomdza, 2007); and report a meta-analytic estimate of a

moderate average effect (Roth, Robbert, & Straus, 2015). We then set out the evidence that

complicates the textbook account: incentivized and field studies that find small, erratic, or no

sunk-cost effects (Friedman et al., 2007; Ashraf, Berry, & Shapiro, 2010); failed replications of

a foundational escalation experiment and of a de-escalation technique (Białek, We¸grzyn, &

Meyers, 2021; Schulz-Hardt et al., 2021); and the argument that responding to sunk costs can

sometimes be rational (McAfee, Mialon, & Mialon, 2010). We conclude with decision-process

safeguards, distinguishing those with direct experimental support from those that are plausi-

ble but untested or contested, as ways of narrowing the resulting Rationality Gap.

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Cite

BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{mansour2026weight,
  title = {{The Weight of the Past: Sunk Costs, Escalation of Commitment, and the Limits of the Evidence}},
  author = {Karim T. Mansour Karim T. Mansour},
  howpublished = {Zenodo},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23556409},
  url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23556409},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - The Weight of the Past: Sunk Costs, Escalation of Commitment, and the Limits of the Evidence
AU  - Karim T. Mansour Karim T. Mansour
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/22
PB  - Zenodo
DO  - 10.5281/zenodo.23556409
UR  - https://zenodo.org/records/23556409
AB  - A forward-looking decision-maker should ignore costs that cannot be recovered. A large be-  havioral literature nonetheless reports that prior, irrecoverable investments of money, time,  or effort push people to continue with courses of action they would not otherwise choose.  This paper reviews that literature with attention to both its strongest findings and its weakest  points. We separate the sunk cost effect (Arkes & Blumer, 1985) from escalation of commit-  ment, which adds personal responsibility for the original decision (Staw, 1976); summarize  laboratory, professional-sports, and entrepreneurial evidence (Staw & Hoang, 1995; Camerer  & Weber, 1999; &Aring;stebro, Jeffrey, & Adomdza, 2007); and report a meta-analytic estimate of a  moderate average effect (Roth, Robbert, & Straus, 2015). We then set out the evidence that  complicates the textbook account: incentivized and field studies that find small, erratic, or no  sunk-cost effects (Friedman et al., 2007; Ashraf, Berry, & Shapiro, 2010); failed replications of  a foundational escalation experiment and of a de-escalation technique (Białek, We&cedil;grzyn, &  Meyers, 2021; Schulz-Hardt et al., 2021); and the argument that responding to sunk costs can  sometimes be rational (McAfee, Mialon, & Mialon, 2010). We conclude with decision-process  safeguards, distinguishing those with direct experimental support from those that are plausi-  ble but untested or contested, as ways of narrowing the resulting Rationality Gap.
ER  -

Abstract

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