Searching for the sunk cost fallacy
Friedman and colleagues went looking for the sunk cost fallacy in a controlled setting and largely failed to find it. Participants played a computer game in which they dug for treasure on an island and could pay a cost, sometimes high and sometimes low, to move to another one. If the fallacy operates as described, people should stay longer on islands that were expensive to reach. Across eleven variations, including different visual presentations, different ways of learning an island's value and different cost levels, the effect was surprisingly small and largely unmoved by the psychological factors thought to drive it. The paper is a useful corrective in a literature where the phenomenon is usually treated as established and universal. It does not show that sunk costs never influence people; it shows that in a clean, repeated, low-stakes setting the effect is hard to produce. This vault cites it alongside the meta-analysis and the original demonstrations.
Friedman and colleagues went looking for the sunk cost fallacy in a controlled setting and largely failed to find it. Participants played a computer game in which they dug for treasure on an island and could pay a cost, sometimes high and sometimes low, to move to another one. If the fallacy operates as described, people should stay longer on islands that were expensive to reach. Across eleven variations, including different visual presentations, different ways of learning an island's value and different cost levels, the effect was surprisingly small and largely unmoved by the psychological factors thought to drive it. The paper is a useful corrective in a literature where the phenomenon is usually treated as established and universal. It does not show that sunk costs never influence people; it shows that in a clean, repeated, low-stakes setting the effect is hard to produce. This vault cites it alongside the meta-analysis and the original demonstrations.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Eleven treatment factors; "a surprisingly small sunk cost effect that is generally insensitive to the proposed psychological drivers". Abstract only.
Where we use it
- Why You Finish the Series You Stopped Enjoying, Why We Act
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-006-9134-0
DOI: 10.1007/s10683-006-9134-0