Throwing good effort after bad: Evidence for a sunk-cost effect in cognitive effort-based decision-making

Resumen

The sunk-cost effect, an influential decision-making bias elicited by the consideration of past, irrecoverable resource investments toward a choice option, is well-documented for economic decisions. Contrary, evidence for sunk-cost effects for non-monetary costs, such as cognitive effort, has been mixed. Here, we present findings from two experiments (in-person study: N=36; online study: N=89), in which healthy participants performed an effort investment task designed to assess the impact of past effort exertion on current choices about continuing or abandoning a course of action. Across both experiments, we found that prior effort investment substantially increased participants’ willingness to invest further resources (i.e., to exert additional effort). These findings provide compelling evidence for the existence of an effort-based sunk-cost effect. Further, they highlight the importance of previous effort investments for influencing present choice behavior, indicating the need to refine contemporary cost-benefit models of effort to account for past effort exertion.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Bogdanov, M., Devine, S., Fu, Z., Wang, E., & Otto, A. R. (2024). Throwing good effort after bad: Evidence for a sunk-cost effect in cognitive effort-based decision-making. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/r5n6f