Most of us know what it's like to stay in a job or a relationship after it's stopped being satisfying, or to take on a project that's too big and be reluctant to admit it. CEOs have been known to allocate manpower and money to projects long after it becomes clear that they are failing. Think of JP Morgan's "London Whale" Bruno Iksil, who doubled down on a losing bet rather than admit his losses and ultimately cost the bank over six billion dollars. Similarly there was John Edwards, who couldn't bring himself to end his losing bid for the Presidency even after his mistress became pregnant.
The costs to a person who does not know when to quit can be enormous. In economics it's known as sunk cost fallacy, though the costs are more than financial. While we recognize the fallacy almost immediately in others, it's harder to see in ourselves. Why?
There are several powerful, largely unconscious psychological forces at work. We may throw good money after bad or waste time in a dead-end relationship because we haven't come up with an alternative; or because we don't want to admit to our friends and family, or to ourselves, that we were wrong. But the most likely culprit is this innate, overwhelming aversion to sunk costs.
Sunk costs are the investments that you've put into something that you can't get back out. They are the years you spent training for a profession you hate, or waiting for your commitment-phobic boyfriend to propose. They are the thousands of dollars you spent on redecorating your living room, only to find that you hate living in it. Once you've realized that you probably won't succeed, or that you are unhappy with the results, it shouldn't matter how much time and effort you've already put into something. If your job or your boyfriend have taken up some of the best years of your life, it doesn't make sense to let them use up the years you've got left. An ugly living room is an ugly living room, no matter how much money you spent making it so.
As studies by behavioral economists like Daniel Kahnemen and Dan Ariely show, people are generally loss-averse. Putting in a lot, only to end up with nothing to show for it, is just too awful for most of us to seriously consider. The problem is one of focus. We worry far too much about what we'll lose if we just move on, instead of focusing on the costs of not moving on: more wasted time and effort, more unhappiness, and more missed opportunities.
Recent research by Northwestern University psychologists Daniel Molden and Chin Ming Hui demonstrates an effective way to be sure you are making the best decisions when things go awry: focus on what you have to gain by moving on, rather than what you have to lose. When people think about goals in terms of potential gain, that's a "promotion focus," which makes them more comfortable making mistakes and accepting losses. When people adopt a "prevention focus," they think about goals in terms of what they could lose if they don't succeed, so they become more sensitive to sunk costs. This is the focus people usually adopt, if unconsciously, when deciding whether or not to walk away. It usually tells us not to walk away, even when we should.
In one of their studies, Molden and Hui put participants into either a promotion or prevention focus (by asking them to write about their goals in terms of either gains or losses, respectively). Next, each participant was told to imagine that he or she was CEO of an aviation company that had committed $10 million to developing a plane that can't be detected by radar. With the project near completion and $9 million already spent, a rival company announces the availability of their own radar-blank plane, which is both superior in performance and lower in cost. The question put to CEOs was simple: do you invest the remaining $1 million and finish your company's (inferior, more expensive, and of course less marketable) plane, or cut your losses and move on?
Molden and Hui found that participants with a prevention focus stayed the course and invested the remaining $1 million roughly 80 percent of the time. The odds of making that mistake were significantly reduced by adopting a promotion focus: Those people invested the remaining $1 million less than 60 percent of the time.
When we see our goals in terms of what we can gain, rather than what we might lose, we are more likely to see a doomed endeavor for what it is.大多数人都知道，当一份工作或一段情缘不再适合你的时候，要把它们继续下去会是怎样一种滋味，违心去做一件力不从心的事情也是一样。有许多公司总裁在明知道项目没有成功可能之后还在继续往里面投入人力物力。想一想摩根大通的交易员“伦敦鲸”布鲁诺?伊科西尔，他不甘失败在输盘上加倍下注，结果造成这家银行付出了超过60亿美元的代价。同样的还有约翰尼?爱德华兹，他在情侣怀孕的情况下也不肯退出已经输定了的总统竞选。
一个人可能因为不懂得应该在何时放弃而付出很大的代价。在经济学中这种代价被称为“沉没成本谬误”，但这种代价往往还不仅仅限于经济方面。通常我们一眼就能看出别人在犯这样的错误，却不容易认识到自己也犯了同样的毛病。这是为什么呢？
这是因为有几种强势的，在很大程度上没有被意识到的心理因素在起作用。我们在项目失败后仍在往里面扔钱，在一段情缘走进死胡同后还在浪费时间，这是因为我们一时还没有找到可以替代的东西，或者我们不想对朋友或家人承认自己做错了。但产生这种情况的罪魁祸首可能是我们对于沉没成本的与生俱来的极大嫌恶和反感。
一旦你意识到你可能不会成功，或者即便成功所得到的结果也并不是你想要的，那么你以前为之所投入的时间和精力就没那么重要了。
沉没成本是你无法收回的投资，是你花上几年时间去接受一种你不喜欢的职业培训，或等待来自你那不负责任男友的求婚。沉没成本是你花上几千美金去重新装修了你的客厅，却发现自己根本不喜欢住在这里。你一旦意识到自己可能不会成功，或者你不乐意看到事情的结果，你就不应该再去在意你已经为此付出了多少的时间和精力。假如你已经为自己的工作或男友消耗了你一生中最美好的几年时光，那么你再让他们来消耗你剩余的时光就毫无道理了。既然你不喜欢你的客厅，那么再去计较为这间客厅花了多少钱就没有意义了。
正如行为经济学家丹尼尔?卡尼曼和丹?艾瑞利的研究所表明的那样，人们通常都不喜欢失败，付出很多而结果一无所获是我们许多人都不愿意面对的事实。这是一种由关注方向产生的问题——我们太过担心放弃可能会造成的损失，而不是去关注坚守所需要付出的代价：浪费更多的时间和精力，带来更多的烦恼和痛苦，还会错失更多的机会。
西北大学心理学家丹尼尔?摩尔登和秦明辉（音译）的最近研究表明，当事情变坏时做出正确决策的有效方法是把关注点转向放弃可能得到的好处，而不是由此带来的损失。当人们想到未来目标的潜在收益时，这是一种“促进性关注”，能使人们更易于接受可能产生的错误和失败。而当人们采取另外一种“防御性关注”时，他们在设定目标时会想到假如不成功可能造成的损失，于是他们对“沉没成本”更加敏感。而“防御性关注”是人们在决定是否放弃时通常采取的关注，虽然有时是在无意识当中。即便是在应该放弃的情况下，防御性关注也会告诉我们不要放弃。
在摩尔登和秦明辉的研究过程中，他们让参与者既采用促进性关注也采用防御性关注（要求参与者分别写出实现目标可能带来的收益和损失）。接下来他们要求每一位参与者想象他或她是一位飞机制造公司的总裁，他们的公司要投入一千万美元去开发一种隐形飞机。当投资已经用去九百万项目接近尾声时，有一家竞争的公司宣布可以出售一种隐形飞机，这种飞机的性能更优价格更低。这时放在总裁面前的问题很简单：你是继续投入余下的一百万美元去完成本公司隐形飞机的开发（性能较差价格更高，市场前景肯定不妙），还是立即止损放弃这架飞机的开发？
摩尔登和秦明辉发现参与者在采用防御性关注时有80%的人坚持本公司飞机的开发。而当他们在采用促进性关注时犯这个错误的人明显减少了，只有不到60%的人继续投入余下的一百万美元。
当我们在设定目标时能看到收益而不是损失，我们就更能看清楚有些注定要失败的努力会给我们带来什么。
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