The Escalation of Commitment to a Failing Course of Action: Toward Theoretical Progress
回顾了决策者因不愿承认先前资源投入无效而持续失败行动的证据，区分了替代和补充自我辩护理论的不同解释，指出补充理论能更完整解释承诺升级现象。
Escalating commitment (or escalation) refers to the tendency for decision makers to persist with failing courses of action. The present article first reviews evidence suggesting that escalation is determined, at least in part, by decision makers' unwillingness to admit that their prior allocation of resources to the chosen course of action was in vain (the self-justification explanation). A distinction is drawn in the second part of the article between alternative (to self-justification) explanations of escalating commitment: Some are designed to replace self-justification, whereas others are intended to supplement self-justification, that is, to add explanatory power beyond that which can be accounted for by self-justification. There is little evidence that the replacement theories provide a better explanation than does self-justification; however, theories designed to supplement self-justification are likely to lead to a more complete explanation. The article concludes by describing several research str...