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.
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大多數(shù)人都知道，當(dāng)一份工作或一段情緣不再適合你的時(shí)候，要把它們繼續(xù)下去會(huì)是怎樣一種滋味，違心去做一件力不從心的事情也是一樣。有許多公司總裁在明知道項(xiàng)目沒有成功可能之后還在繼續(xù)往里面投入人力物力。想一想摩根大通的交易員“倫敦鯨”布魯諾•伊科西爾，他不甘失敗在輸盤上加倍下注，結(jié)果造成這家銀行付出了超過60億美元的代價(jià)。同樣的還有約翰尼•愛德華茲，他在情侶懷孕的情況下也不肯退出已經(jīng)輸定了的總統(tǒng)競選。
一個(gè)人可能因?yàn)椴欢脩?yīng)該在何時(shí)放棄而付出很大的代價(jià)。在經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)中這種代價(jià)被稱為“沉沒成本謬誤”，但這種代價(jià)往往還不僅僅限于經(jīng)濟(jì)方面。通常我們一眼就能看出別人在犯這樣的錯(cuò)誤，卻不容易認(rèn)識(shí)到自己也犯了同樣的毛病。這是為什么呢？
這是因?yàn)橛袔追N強(qiáng)勢(shì)的，在很大程度上沒有被意識(shí)到的心理因素在起作用。我們?cè)陧?xiàng)目失敗后仍在往里面扔錢，在一段情緣走進(jìn)死胡同后還在浪費(fèi)時(shí)間，這是因?yàn)槲覀円粫r(shí)還沒有找到可以替代的東西，或者我們不想對(duì)朋友或家人承認(rèn)自己做錯(cuò)了。但產(chǎn)生這種情況的罪魁禍?zhǔn)卓赡苁俏覀儗?duì)于沉沒成本的與生俱來的極大嫌惡和反感。
一旦你意識(shí)到你可能不會(huì)成功，或者即便成功所得到的結(jié)果也并不是你想要的，那么你以前為之所投入的時(shí)間和精力就沒那么重要了。
沉沒成本是你無法收回的投資，是你花上幾年時(shí)間去接受一種你不喜歡的職業(yè)培訓(xùn)，或等待來自你那不負(fù)責(zé)任男友的求婚。沉沒成本是你花上幾千美金去重新裝修了你的客廳，卻發(fā)現(xiàn)自己根本不喜歡住在這里。你一旦意識(shí)到自己可能不會(huì)成功，或者你不樂意看到事情的結(jié)果，你就不應(yīng)該再去在意你已經(jīng)為此付出了多少的時(shí)間和精力。假如你已經(jīng)為自己的工作或男友消耗了你一生中最美好的幾年時(shí)光，那么你再讓他們來消耗你剩余的時(shí)光就毫無道理了。既然你不喜歡你的客廳，那么再去計(jì)較為這間客廳花了多少錢就沒有意義了。
正如行為經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家丹尼爾•卡尼曼和丹•艾瑞利的研究所表明的那樣，人們通常都不喜歡失敗，付出很多而結(jié)果一無所獲是我們?cè)S多人都不愿意面對(duì)的事實(shí)。這是一種由關(guān)注方向產(chǎn)生的問題——我們太過擔(dān)心放棄可能會(huì)造成的損失，而不是去關(guān)注堅(jiān)守所需要付出的代價(jià)：浪費(fèi)更多的時(shí)間和精力，帶來更多的煩惱和痛苦，還會(huì)錯(cuò)失更多的機(jī)會(huì)。www.pmcwfrk.cn/sitemap.htm
西北大學(xué)心理學(xué)家丹尼爾•摩爾登和秦明輝（音譯）的最近研究表明，當(dāng)事情變壞時(shí)做出正確決策的有效方法是把關(guān)注點(diǎn)轉(zhuǎn)向放棄可能得到的好處，而不是由此帶來的損失。當(dāng)人們想到未來目標(biāo)的潛在收益時(shí)，這是一種“促進(jìn)性關(guān)注”，能使人們更易于接受可能產(chǎn)生的錯(cuò)誤和失敗。而當(dāng)人們采取另外一種“防御性關(guān)注”時(shí)，他們?cè)谠O(shè)定目標(biāo)時(shí)會(huì)想到假如不成功可能造成的損失，于是他們對(duì)“沉沒成本”更加敏感。而“防御性關(guān)注”是人們?cè)跊Q定是否放棄時(shí)通常采取的關(guān)注，雖然有時(shí)是在無意識(shí)當(dāng)中。即便是在應(yīng)該放棄的情況下，防御性關(guān)注也會(huì)告訴我們不要放棄。
在摩爾登和秦明輝的研究過程中，他們讓參與者既采用促進(jìn)性關(guān)注也采用防御性關(guān)注（要求參與者分別寫出實(shí)現(xiàn)目標(biāo)可能帶來的收益和損失）。接下來他們要求每一位參與者想象他或她是一位飛機(jī)制造公司的總裁，他們的公司要投入一千萬美元去開發(fā)一種隱形飛機(jī)。當(dāng)投資已經(jīng)用去九百萬項(xiàng)目接近尾聲時(shí)，有一家競爭的公司宣布可以出售一種隱形飛機(jī)，這種飛機(jī)的性能更優(yōu)價(jià)格更低。這時(shí)放在總裁面前的問題很簡單：你是繼續(xù)投入余下的一百萬美元去完成本公司隱形飛機(jī)的開發(fā)（性能較差價(jià)格更高，市場(chǎng)前景肯定不妙），還是立即止損放棄這架飛機(jī)的開發(fā)？
摩爾登和秦明輝發(fā)現(xiàn)參與者在采用防御性關(guān)注時(shí)有80%的人堅(jiān)持本公司飛機(jī)的開發(fā)。而當(dāng)他們?cè)诓捎么龠M(jìn)性關(guān)注時(shí)犯這個(gè)錯(cuò)誤的人明顯減少了，只有不到60%的人繼續(xù)投入余下的一百萬美元。
當(dāng)我們?cè)谠O(shè)定目標(biāo)時(shí)能看到收益而不是損失，我們就更能看清楚有些注定要失敗的努力會(huì)給我們帶來什么。
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