The sunk cost effect is the increased tendency to persist in an endeavor once an investment of money, effort, or time has been made. To date, humans are the only animal in which this effect has been observed unambiguously. We developed a behavior-analytic model of the sunk cost effect to explore the potential for this behavior in pigeons as well as in humans. Each trial started out with a short expected ratio, but on some trials assumed a longer expected ratio part way through the trial. Subjects had the (usually preferable) option of "escaping" the trial if the longer expected ratio had come into effect in order to bring on a new trial that again had a short expected ratio. In Experiments 1 through 3, we manipulated two independent variables that we hypothesized would affect the pigeons' ability to discriminate the increase in the expected ratio within a trial: (a) the presence or absence of stimuli that signal an increase in the expected ratio, and (b) the severity of the increase in the expected ratio. We found that the pigeons were most likely to persist nonoptimally through the longer expected ratios when stimulus changes were absent and when the increase in the expected ratio was less severe. Experiment 4 employed a similar procedure with human subjects that manipulated only the severity of the increase in the expected ratio and found a result similar to that of the pigeon experiment. In Experiment 5, we tested the hypothesis that a particular history of reinforcement would induce pigeons to persist through the longer expected ratios; the results suggested instead that the history of reinforcement caused the pigeons to persist less compared to pigeons that did not have that history.
We explored the potential for a sunk-cost effect in the realm of time. Questionnaire studies (Experiments 1-4) obtained a sunk-time effect that was robust to manipulations of prospective value, individual versus group consequences, and the effort or enjoyment inherent in the time. Behavioral experiments (Experiments 5-7) also suggested a sunk-time effect and found support for a personal responsibility by sunk cost interaction on choice behavior. We discuss theoretical implications and a potential connection to animal sunk cost phenomena. , 1985), and correlational field studies (Staw and Hoang, 1995). The effect may be linear (Garland, 1990), and the relative size of the sunk cost may matter more than its absolute size (Garland and Newport, 1991). Theories handling the effect include the desire to avoid waste (Arkes & Ayton, 1999), prospect theory (Whyte, 1986), self-justification (Staw, 1976), and attempted normative decision-making (implied by Bowen, 1987;Bragger, Bragger, Hantula, & Kirnan, 1998;Goltz, 1999;McCain, 1986;Navarro and Fantino, 2005;. This paper explores the sunk-cost effect in a relatively untapped domain, the temporal domain. The only study in the human literature to thoroughly test for a "sunk-time" effect produced a notable failure (Soman, 2001). This paper also explores a potential contributing factor to a sunk-time effect, personal responsibility for the sunk time. While personal responsibility has received much attention in the "escalation" paradigm, its role in the sunkcost effect scarcely has been tested and is poorly understood. The following sections elaborate on these issues. The potential impact of sunk timeAny behavior may be defined in terms of time spent, whether it is waiting in a checkout line, maintaining a friend, a hobby, or holding a belief. If the sunk-cost effect occurs with time, then potentially it could affect anything one does. Anecdotally, some behaviors do appear to intensify over time, for no clear reason other than the simple passage of time. In common parlance, "old habits die hard". Popular examples are relationships that persist for too long, and people who cling to a belief or attitude long after the point where opposing evidence is
Researchers have become increasingly interested in the descriptionexperience gap or the finding that people respond differently to the same quantitative information depending on whether it is described or experienced. Most studies on the gap have focused on binary choices between a safe option and a risky option and have compared decisions made from description alone versus experience alone. We review studies examining other decision-related phenomena-probability learning, the sunk-cost effect, choices in a repeated-trials prisoner's dilemma, and base-rate neglect-with an experience-based approach that often includes conditions combining description and experience. In probability learning, the sunk-cost effect and a repeated-trials prisoner's dilemma, participants come closer to behaving optimally when description and experience are simultaneously available than when experience alone is available. In studies of base-rate neglect, participants respond similarly under conditions of description alone and experience alone. Studies with nonhuman animals strengthen the generality of our conclusions regarding the sunk-cost effect and suggest a potential cause of base-rate neglect: a prior experience of having been rewarded for matching like items.
This article presents a 3-D science-fiction-based videogame method to study learning, and two experiments that we used to validate it. In this method, participants are first trained to respond to enemy spaceships (Stimulus 2, or S2) with particular keypresses, followed by transport to a new context (galaxy), where other manipulations can occur. During conditioning, colored flashing lights (Stimulus 1, or S1) can predict S2, and the response attached to S2 from the prior phase comes to be evoked by S1. In Experiment 1 we demonstrated that, in accord with previous findings from animals, conditioning in this procedure was positively related to the ratio of the time between trials to the time within a trial. Experiment 2 demonstrated the phenomena of extinction, timing, and renewal. Responding to S1 was slightly lost with a context change, and diminished over trials in the absence of S2. On early extinction trials, responding during S1 declined after the time that S2 normally occurred. Extinguished responding to S1 recovered robustly with a context change.
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