Sensitivity to "sunk costs" in mice, rats, and humans
Sweis and colleagues built two matched foraging tasks, one for rodents and one for humans, in which a subject waits for a reward and can abandon the wait at any point. Mice, rats and people all showed the same pattern: the longer they had already waited, the less willing they were to quit, which is sensitivity to time already spent rather than to what remains. The unexpected detail is where in the sequence it appeared. Subjects were not affected by time invested while deciding whether to commit; the sensitivity only emerged after the initial decision had been made. The authors read that as evidence that honouring sunk costs is a separate vulnerability from deliberation rather than a flaw within it, and that the separation is conserved across species. One caution belongs here: a later paper argues the pattern can be produced by a statistical artefact in this design, and this vault cites that alongside.
Sweis and colleagues built two matched foraging tasks, one for rodents and one for humans, in which a subject waits for a reward and can abandon the wait at any point. Mice, rats and people all showed the same pattern: the longer they had already waited, the less willing they were to quit, which is sensitivity to time already spent rather than to what remains. The unexpected detail is where in the sequence it appeared. Subjects were not affected by time invested while deciding whether to commit; the sensitivity only emerged after the initial decision had been made. The authors read that as evidence that honouring sunk costs is a separate vulnerability from deliberation rather than a flaw within it, and that the separation is conserved across species. One caution belongs here: a later paper argues the pattern can be produced by a statistical artefact in this design, and this vault cites that alongside.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Sweis, B. M., Abram, S. V., Schmidt, B. J., Seeland, K. D., MacDonald, A. W., Thomas, M. J. & Redish, A. D. (2018). "Sensitivity to 'sunk costs' in mice, rats, and humans." Science, 361, 178-181. Abstract only.
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- 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/10.1126/science.aar8644
DOI: 10.1126/science.aar8644