Editing Sunk cost (section)

=== Sense of personal responsibility ===

In a study of 96 business students, Staw and Fox<ref>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1177/001872677703000503| volume = 30| issue = 5| pages = 431–450| last1 = Staw| first1 = Barry M.| last2 = Fox| first2 = Frederick V.| s2cid = 146542771| title = Escalation: The Determinants of Commitment to a Chosen Course of Action| journal = Human Relations| date = 1977| url = https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247716666| access-date = 2019-08-06}}</ref> gave the subjects a choice between making an [[Research and development|R&D]] investment either in an underperforming company department, or in other sections of the hypothetical company. Staw and Fox divided the participants into two groups: a low responsibility condition and a high responsibility condition. In the high responsibility condition, the participants were told that they, as manager, had made an earlier, disappointing R&D investment. In the low responsibility condition, subjects were told that a former manager had made a previous R&D investment in the underperforming division and were given the same profit data as the other group. In both cases, subjects were then asked to make a new $20 million investment. There was a significant interaction between assumed responsibility and average investment, with the high responsibility condition averaging $12.97 million and the low condition averaging $9.43 million. Similar results have been obtained in other studies.<ref name=Staw1974>{{Cite journal| doi = 10.1016/0030-5073(76)90005-2| issn = 0030-5073| volume = 16| issue = 1| pages = 27–44| last = Staw| first = Barry M.| title = Knee-deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action| journal = Organizational Behavior and Human Performance| access-date = 2019-08-05| date = 1976| url = http://strategy.sjsu.edu/www.stable/B290/reading/Staw,%20B%20M,%201976,%20Organizational%20Behavior%20and%20Human%20Performance.%2016%20pp%2027-44.pdf}}</ref><ref name="Arkes and Blumer" /><ref name="Whyte1986">{{cite journal|last1=Whyte|first1=Glen|title=Escalating Commitment to a Course of Action: A Reinterpretation|journal=The Academy of Management Review|volume=11|issue=2|year=1986|pages=311–321|issn=0363-7425|doi=10.2307/258462|jstor=258462}}</ref>