(p. D6) Suppose that, seeking a fun evening out, you pay $175 for a ticket to a new Broadway musical. Seated in the balcony, you quickly realize that the acting is bad, the sets are ugly and no one, you suspect, will go home humming the melodies.
Do you head out the door at the intermission, or stick it out for the duration?
Studies of human decision-making suggest that most people will stay put, even though money spent in the past logically should have no bearing on the choice.
This “sunk cost fallacy,” as economists call it, is one of many ways that humans allow emotions to affect their choices, sometimes to their own detriment. But the tendency to factor past investments into decision-making is apparently not limited to Homo sapiens.
In a study published on Thursday [July 12, 2018] in the journal Science, investigators at the University of Minnesota reported that mice and rats were just as likely as humans to be influenced by sunk costs.
The more time they invested in waiting for a reward — in the case of the rodents, flavored pellets; in the case of the humans, entertaining videos — the less likely they were to quit the pursuit before the delay ended.
“Whatever is going on in the humans is also going on in the nonhuman animals,” said A. David Redish, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and an author of the study.
This cross-species consistency, he and others said, suggested that in some decision-making situations, taking account of how much has already been invested might pay off.
For the full story, see:
Erica Goode. “‘Sunk Cost Fallacy’ Claims More Victims.” The New York Times (Tuesday, July 17, 2018): D6
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 12, 2018, and has the title “Mice Don’t Know When to Let It Go, Either.”)