Preference-based escalation: A new interpretation for the responsibility effect in escalating commitment and entrapment

A prominent finding in escalating commitment and entrapment research is the “responsibility effect”: people invest more in a losing course of action or persist with it for longer if they themselves initiated this action (responsibility) as opposed to if it was assigned to them. We argue that this effect is driven by participants’ preferences. Responsible participants usually prefer the chosen alternative since they have chosen it themselves. Non-responsible participants, in contrast, represent a mix of persons who either favor or disfavor the chosen alternative. In two experiments, we demonstrate that responsible participants favor the chosen course of action more strongly than non-responsible participants do, that these preferences facilitate reinvestment in and persistence with the chosen course of action, and that responsibility has no effect over and above this effect of preferences. Non-responsible participants preferring the chosen course of action made similar reinvestments and exhibited similar persistence as responsible participants.