Escalating Commitment to a Course of Action: A Reinterpretation

Abstract

Escalating commitment to a losing course of action is usually attributed to a need on the part of decision makers to maintain the illusion that they have not erred. Prospect theory suggests a different explanation for this commonly observed tendency—escalating commitment is seen as an artifact of the framing of decisions. As a result, escalating commitment may occur in a much wider variety of circumstances than is suggested by the view that it is a product of self-justification motives.