Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
888591 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 2014 14 Pages PDF
Abstract

•We examine escalation of commitment to initiatives with prosocial and egoistic aims.•We manipulate the prosocial or egoistic aims of a task in the lab.•We find people escalate commitment more often to prosocial initiatives.•A desire for a positive moral self-regard mediates this difference.•Self-importance of moral identity moderates this difference.

Across three experiments, people escalated commitment more frequently to a failing prosocial initiative (i.e., an initiative that had the primary aim of improving the outcomes of others in need) than they did to a failing egoistic initiative (i.e., an initiative that had the primary aim of improving the outcomes of the decision-maker). A test of mediation (Study 1b) and a test of moderation (Study 2) each provided evidence that a desire for a positive moral self-regard underlies people’s tendency to escalate commitment more frequently to failing prosocial initiatives than to failing egoistic initiatives. We discuss the implications of these findings for the resource-allocation decisions that people and organizations face when undertaking initiatives with prosocial aims.

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