Works
- The Psychology of Sunk Cost, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 35(1), with Catherine Blumer, 1985
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
The sunk cost effect. The sunk cost effect is a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once money, effort, or time has been invested in it. In a field study, theater patrons who had paid full price for season tickets attended more plays than those given discounts; questionnaire studies found that people who had already invested rated a project's chance of success higher, and the authors trace the behavior partly to a wish not to appear wasteful.
What it explains
Arkes and Blumer explain why money, time, and effort already spent keep projects alive after they should stop, and why front-loading commitments makes a decision hard to reverse. People keep going partly to avoid looking as if they wasted what they spent.
Tactics that draw on Hal R. Arkes (18)
- Attrition by Process
- Bait and Switch Initiative
- Change Agent Burnout
- Clean Room Execution
- Ghost Project
- Gray Zone Expansion
- Hyper-Specialization Trap
- Loyalty Tax
- Mission Creep
- No True Scotsman Defense
- One-Way Door Label
- Outsider Advantage
- Perpetual Pilot
- Political Vendor Lock-In
- Shifting Success Criteria
- Sunk Cost Lock-In
- Technicality Trap
- Virtual Bench
In Thinking Tools
Known for
With Catherine Blumer he documented the sunk cost effect: a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once money, effort, or time has been invested in it. Theater patrons who paid full price for a season subscription attended more plays than those given discounts, and the authors traced the behavior partly to a wish not to appear wasteful.