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. 2022 Apr;151(4):960-965.
doi: 10.1037/xge0001101. Epub 2021 Sep 2.

Staying the course: Decision makers who escalate commitment are trusted and trustworthy

Charles A Dorison  1 , Christopher K Umphres  2 , Jennifer S Lerner  2
Affiliations

Staying the course: Decision makers who escalate commitment are trusted and trustworthy

Charles A Dorison et al. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2022 Apr.

Abstract

Escalation of commitment-the tendency to remain committed to a course of action, often despite negative prospects-is common. Why does it persist? Across three preregistered experiments (N = 3,888), we tested the hypothesis that escalating commitment signals trustworthiness. Experiments 1-2, respectively, revealed that decision makers who escalated commitment were perceived as more trustworthy and entrusted with 29% more money by third-party observers. Experiment 3 revealed that decision makers who escalated commitment subsequently made more trustworthy choices, returning 15% more money than those who de-escalated. Decision makers were equally likely to escalate commitment in public versus in private, possibly because they previously internalized how others would evaluate them. Complementing research examining cognitive factors driving escalation of commitment, the present work reveals that accounting for the reputational causes and consequences of decisions to escalate enhances understanding of why escalation is so common and suggests how organizations might reduce it. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests or conflicts.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Changes in Trusting Behavior as a Function of Escalation of Commitment Note. Results from Experiment 2: Observers sent 29% more money in a Trust Game to Actors who escalated commitment. Shaded plots display the distributions; horizontal bars indicate the means; rectangles show 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Trustworthiness as a Function of Escalation of Commitment Note. Results from Experiment 3: Actors who chose to escalate commitment returned 15% more money in a Trust Game. Shaded plots display the distributions; horizontal bars indicate the means; rectangles show 95%-confidence intervals.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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