Features Characterizing The Sunk Cost Heuristic
Two specific features characterizing the sunk cost heuristic worth mentioning are:
- An overly optimistic probability bias, whereby after an investment the evaluation of one's investment-reaping dividends is increased.
- The requisite of personal responsibility. Sunk cost appears to operate chiefly in those who feel personal responsibility for the investments that are to be viewed as sunk.
Read more about this topic: Sunk Costs
Famous quotes containing the words features, sunk and/or cost:
“These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, particolored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Her man falling asleep,
limp from dragging a plow sunk in mud,
the slattern curses the rains,
her pleasures unfinished.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)
“I acknowledge that the balance I have achieved between work and family roles comes at a cost, and every day I must weigh whether I live with that cost happily or guiltily, or whether some other lifestyle entails trade-offs I might accept more readily. It is always my choice: to change what I cannot tolerate, or tolerate what I cannot—or will not—change.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)