A query theory account of the effect of memory retrieval on the sunk cost bias

Ting, Hsuchi; Wallsten, Thomas S.

doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0099-4

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(19 reference statements)

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“…Persistence in honoring sunk costs across repeated decisions—referred to as escalation of commitment 68 —has been the subject of considerable attention. Some laboratory studies use behavioral measures of the SCF and operationalize the sunk cost as a required behavioral investment of time, money, or effort 69–72 . More typically, behavioral measures of the SCF are obtained by using vignettes as stimuli to portray hypothetical investments.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some laboratory studies use behavioral measures of the SCF and operationalize the sunk cost as a required behavioral investment of time, money, or effort. [69][70][71][72] More typically, behavioral measures of the SCF are obtained by using vignettes as stimuli to portray hypothetical investments. Hypothetical scenarios are used in both laboratory studies and survey research.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Researchers have offered a plethora of explanations for the SCF and escalation of commitment to sunk costs, including believing the attempt will succeed, 83 generating reasons for continuing versus pursuing alternatives, 72 failure to consider alternatives, 93 maintaining a positive self‐image, 68,88 project commitment, 94,95 being perceived by others as “wasting” a resource, 96 mental accounting, 89,97,98 subjective interpretations of scenarios, 74 learning a lesson, 99 loss aversion 65,100 and the “waste not” heuristic 65,101 . In studies that investigate age‐related differences, the “waste not” heuristic has received the most attention.…”

Section: The Sunk‐cost Fallacy: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The prior investment (sunk cost) portrayed in hypothetical scenarios is often money, 65 typically amounts many people do not deal with on a daily basis-such as thousands or millions of dollars. 77,[83][84][85][86][87][88] Researchers have begun to consider other investment dimensions such as time 72,76,78,82,89 and effort. 69,90 Measurement Some vignettes present a choice between two options embedded within a single scenario.…”

Section: Decision Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Decision‐making heuristics and biases across the life span

Strough

Karns

Schlosnagle

2011

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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We outline a contextual and motivational model of judgment and decision-making (JDM) biases across the life span. Our model focuses on abilities and skills that correspond to deliberative, experiential, and affective decision-making processes. We review research that addresses links between JDM biases and these processes as represented by individual differences in specific abilities and skills (e.g., fluid and crystallized intelligence, executive functioning, emotion regulation, personality traits). We focus on two JDM biases—the sunk-cost fallacy (SCF) and the framing effect. We trace the developmental trajectory of each bias from preschool through middle childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and later adulthood. We conclude that life-span developmental trajectories differ depending on the bias investigated. Existing research suggests relative stability in the framing effect across the life span and decreases in the SCF with age, including in later life. We highlight directions for future research on JDM biases across the life span, emphasizing the need for process-oriented research and research that increases our understanding of JDM biases in people’s everyday lives.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Sunk‐cost Fallacy: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Decision Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Decision‐making heuristics and biases across the life span

Strough

Karns

Schlosnagle

2011

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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“…FTT is an example of theoretical approaches to judgment and decision making that implement the hypothesis that illusions and biases must somehow be rooted in basic memory processes, such as working-memory capacity (e.g., Dougherty & Hunter, 2003; Dougherty & Sprenger, 2006) or selective retrieval (e.g., Ting & Wallsten, 2011; Johnson, Haubl, & Keinan, 2007.) FTT explains such phenomena—the Allais paradox, the framing illusion, and hindsight bias, for instance—as by-products of reliance on gist memories (Reyna & Brainerd, 2011).…”

Section: Overview Of the Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overdistribution illusions: Categorical judgments produce them, confidence ratings reduce them.

Brainerd¹,

Nakamura²,

Reyna³

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Overdistribution is a form of memory distortion in which an event is remembered as belonging to too many episodic states, states that are logically or empirically incompatible with each other. We investigated a response formatting method of suppressing two basic types of overdistribution, disjunction and conjunction illusions, which parallel some classic illusions in the judgment and decision making literature. In this method, subjects respond to memory probes by rating their confidence that test cues belong to specific episodic states (e.g., presented on List 1, presented on List 2), rather than by making the usual categorical judgments about those states. The central prediction, which was derived from the task calibration principle of fuzzy-trace theory, was that confidence ratings should reduce overdistribution by diminishing subjects’ reliance on noncompensatory gist memories. The data of three experiments agreed with that prediction. In Experiment 1, there were reliable disjunction illusions with categorical judgments but not with confidence ratings. In Experiment 2, both response formats produced reliable disjunction illusions, but those for confidence ratings were much smaller than those for categorical judgments. In Experiment 3, there were reliable conjunction illusions with categorical judgments but not with confidence ratings. Apropos of recent controversies over confidence-accuracy correlations in memory, such correlations were positive for hits, negative for correct rejections, and the two types of correlations were of equal magnitude.

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No Time to Waste: Restricting Life‐Span Temporal Horizons Decreases the Sunk‐Cost Fallacy

Strough

Schlosnagle

Karns

et al. 2013

Behavioral Decision Making

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In three studies, we examined the influence of restricted and expansive temporal horizons on the sunk‐cost fallacy. The sunk‐cost fallacy occurs when prior investments instead of future returns influence decisions about future investments. When making decisions about future investments, rational decision makers base decisions on future consequences, not already‐invested costs that are “sunk” and cannot be recovered. In Study 1, we restricted young adult college students' temporal horizons by instructing them to imagine that they did not have much longer to live; this manipulation decreased the sunk‐cost fallacy. In Study 2, we replicated Study 1 and also found that the consequences of manipulating temporal horizons were most pronounced for prior investments of time and that prior investments of time and money had different implications for the sunk‐cost fallacy, depending on the social or nonsocial decision domain. In Study 3, we manipulated temporal horizons by instructing students to imagine their time as a college student was coming to an end. Results were mostly similar to Study 2 but also suggested that focusing on one's mortality may have unique consequences. Implications of the three studies for understanding age differences in sunk‐cost decisions, interventions to improve sunk‐cost decisions, and the situations in which interventions might be most needed are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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A query theory account of the effect of memory retrieval on the sunk cost bias

Cited by 16 publications

References 22 publications

Decision‐making heuristics and biases across the life span

Decision‐making heuristics and biases across the life span

Overdistribution illusions: Categorical judgments produce them, confidence ratings reduce them.

No Time to Waste: Restricting Life‐Span Temporal Horizons Decreases the Sunk‐Cost Fallacy

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