Sunk Cost Fallacy
Behavioral & Decision Making
Sunk Cost Fallacy
The tendency to continue an endeavour due to previously invested resources (time, money, effort) that cannot be recovered, rather than future value.
Explained
- People let past, unrecoverable investment drive future decisions.
- Time, money, or effort already spent makes them reluctant to walk away.
- The mind treats quitting as wasting what was invested, even when continuing costs more.
- Progress bars and partly-finished profiles exploit this to pull people onward.
In the wild
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