Does change of responsibility reduce escalating commitment? A replication and theoretical extension.

Area of Science:

• Decision-making
• Organizational behavior
• Psychology

Background:

• Escalating commitment, the tendency to persist in failing endeavors, is a significant decision-making bias.
• Reassigning responsibility is a widely adopted intervention to mitigate this bias.
• Existing research primarily focuses on single-decision scenarios, lacking long-term and specific effectiveness evaluations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To critically evaluate the temporal stability and specific effectiveness of responsibility reassignment as an intervention against escalating commitment.
• To introduce a modified escalation paradigm for testing intervention persistence and differentiating failure types.
• To determine if responsibility reassignment reduces commitment only in structurally failing projects, not temporarily failing ones.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted using a modified escalation paradigm.
• Experiment 1 assessed the temporal stability of responsibility reassignment.
• Experiment 2 examined the specificity of the intervention across structural (persistent failure) and temporary (ultimate success) failure conditions.

Main Results:

• Experiment 1 found no evidence for the temporal stability of responsibility reassignment.
• Experiment 2 revealed persistent short-term effects, but these were non-specific.
• The intervention reduced commitment to both ultimately losing and ultimately winning courses of action.

Conclusions:

• Responsibility reassignment demonstrates a lack of temporal stability in mitigating escalating commitment.
• The intervention's effects are non-specific, failing to differentiate between genuinely failing and temporarily struggling projects.
• The findings question the overall effectiveness and practical utility of responsibility reassignment as a robust intervention against escalating commitment.