APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY: AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW, 2017, 00 (00), 00–00

doi: 10.1111/apps.12109

Does a Tired Mind Help Avoid a Decision Bias?

The Effect of Ego Depletion on Escalation of
Commitment
Jong Seok Lee*
University of Memphis, USA

Mark Keil
Georgia State University, USA

Kin Fai Ellick Wong

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HKSAR, China

In this research, we investigated the effect of ego depletion on escalation of

commitment. Specifically, we conducted two laboratory experiments and
obtained evidence that ego depletion decreases escalation of commitment. In
Study 1, we found that individuals were less susceptible to escalation of com-
mitment after completing an ego depletion task. In Study 2, we confirmed the
effect observed in Study 1 using a different manipulation of ego depletion and
a different subject pool. Contrary to the fundamental assumption of bounded
rationality that people have a tendency to make decision errors when mental
resources are scarce, the findings of this research show that a tired mind can
help reduce escalation bias.

INTRODUCTION
Does a tired (vs. a rested) mind improve or decrease your decision quality? The
answer seems obvious; as managers often make stupid errors when their mind
is tired, this suggests that a tired mind decreases managerial decision quality.
Consistent with this intuition, Herbert Simons (1957) bounded rationality
notion and Daniel Kahnemans (1973) single resource model of attention
stress that people commit more errors as fewer mental resources are available.
Not surprisingly, this intuition and the core theoretical assumptions of these

* Address for correspondence: Jong Seok Lee, Department of Business Information and
Technology, Fogelman College of Business & Economics, University of Memphis, Memphis,
TN 38152-3120, USA. Email: jslee4@memphis.edu

C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.

V
2 LEE, KEIL AND WONG

two Nobel Prize winners have received ample empirical support. In particular,
the stream of work on ego depletion led by Roy Baumeister and colleagues
have repeatedly demonstrated that mental fatigue causes failure in self-control
and that this in turns triggers negative behavioural consequences (Baumeister,
Bratslavsky, Muraven, & Tice, 1998). The notion of ego depletion has also gen-
erated interest among management reseachers in recent years (Converse &
DeShon, 2009; Gino, Schweitzer, Mead, & Ariely, 2011) and some reported
specific undesirable behaviours that can result from ego depletion, such as
unethical behaviour (Gino et al., 2011).
Contrary to the general view held by economists, psychologists, and man-
agement scholars that a tired mind decreases decision quality, we argue and
demonstrate that in at least one problem context a tired mind—operationalised
as a state of ego depletion—can actually help improve decision quality by
reducing escalation of commitment. Furthermore, this research contributes to
the escalation literature by offering fresh insight into how ones ability influen-
ces escalation decisions. A state of ego depletion impairs the ability to control
oneself on subsequent tasks (i.e. fewer mental resources). Although a strong
ability (i.e. more mental resources) may appear beneficial in avoiding escalation
of commitment, our research, which consists of two laboratory experiments,
provides valuable scientific evidence that in fact an impaired ability (i.e. fewer
mental resources) can effectively reduce esclation of commitment.

ESCALATION OF COMMITMENT AND EGO DEPLETION

Escalation of commitment is the “tendency to become locked in to a course of
action, throwing good money after bad or committing new resources to a los-
ing course of action” (Staw, 1981, p. 578). Escalation of commitment is
regarded as “a particular type of bias” that individuals are prone to “when
approaching decisions serially” (Bazerman & Moore, 2013, p. 119). In the esca-
lation literature prior research has shown that people may choose to continue a
failing course of action because they are “too close to quit” (Garland &
Conlon, 1998), a phenomenon known as the “completion effect”. Researchers
who investigated the completion effect in escalation of commitment suggest
that as progress is made on a project, the goal of completing the project itself
becomes more important than the rational or economic goals that were
deemed important at the outset of the project (e.g. making a profit) (Conlon &
Garland, 1994; Garland & Conlon, 1998). Furthermore, the level of sunk costs
(i.e. the investments already made on a project) are often correlated with com-
pletion level (Garland & Conlon, 1998), and Moon (2001) found that sunk
cost and completion level have independent and interactive effects on escala-
tion of commitment. In a meta-analytic review, Sleesman, Conlon, Mcnamara,
and Miles (2012) found completion level to be an important determinant of
escalation of commitment.
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
 EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 3
In addition, Bowen (1987) suggested that escalation situations in which one
must decide whether or not to continue a previously chosen course of action
after receiving negative feedback inherently involve decision uncertainty. More
specifically, most escalation situations involve equivocal negative feedback
concerning a previously chosen course of action and Bowen (1987) argued that
when negative feedback is strong and unequivocal escalation of commitment is
not expected to occur. This argument later received empirical support when it
was shown that unambiguous negative feedback that is diagnostic of future
returns leads to de-escalation of commitment (Garland, Sandefur, & Rogers,
1990).
Escalation of commitment has triggered the interests of researchers from
multiple disciplines (Brockner, 1992; Hafenbrack, Kinias, & Barsade, 2014;
Molden & Hui, 2011; Staw, 1976; Wong, 2005) not only because it occurs
across a wide variety of decision-making situations such as auctions
(Augenblick, 2016), stock investment (Odean, 1998), and software develop-
ment projects (Keil, 1995), but also because of the potentially wasteful, and in
some cases disastrous, consequences of continuing to invest in a failing course
of action (Staw, 1986). Indeed, both management and psychology research has
paid strong attention to developing de-biasing strategies for the escalation of
commitment, such as learning from a prior escalation experience or an imag-
ined escalation situation (Ku, 2008), mindfulness meditation (Hafenbrack,
et al., 2014) and activating broad motivations for growth and advancement
(Molden & Hui, 2011).
Exhausting the limited pool of mental resources leaves people in a state of
ego depletion, making them less capable of exerting self-control on subsequent
activities or cognitive tasks. The general understanding of ego depletion is that
people with a tired mind tend to simplify decisions by accepting the default,
status quo outcome (Danzigera, Levavb, & Avnaim-Pessoa, 2011). For exam-
ple, to a judge with a tired mind, denying parole is an easier call to make
because it maintains the status quo (keeping the prisoner) and retains the
option of granting parole at a future time. This suggests, on the surface, that
ego depletion may be detrimental when individuals are trapped in a failing
course of action—that is, escalation of commitment (Arkes & Blumer, 1985;
Brockner, 1992; Staw, 1976)—as ego depletion may lead people to choose the
status quo option of continuing the failing course of action as their default.
However, in this research we offer an alternative prediction based on theories
related to cognitive dissonance and working memory.

HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Motivation to justify ones own previous decisions (self-justification motive)
has been found to be a key element driving escalation of commitment (Brock-
ner, 1992; Staw, 1976, 1981). When people receive negative feedback
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
4 LEE, KEIL AND WONG

concerning a course of action that they initiated, they become motivated to

self-justify their prior decision to initiate the course of action by attempting to
turn around the failing course of action (Brockner, 1992; Staw, 1976, 1981).
The theoretical explanation for this behaviour is found in cognitive dissonance
theory (Festinger, 1957), which posits that people experience mental stress or
discomfort when their initial belief is confronted with new information that
contradicts the initial belief. In escalation situations, people experience a nega-
tive feeling when they receive negative feedback concerning a previously cho-
sen course of action and they become motivated to reduce this negative feeling
through self-justification, which requires decision-makers to rationalise their
prior decision (Aronson, 1969). Furthermore, when people engage in rationali-
sation they tend to consume almost their entire central mental resources (i.e.
consuming their working memory capacity) (Chun & Potter, 1995; Jolicoeur &
DellAcqua, 1998; Potter, 1993; Wong, 2002). This indicates that having to
rationalise and justify a prior decision to initiate a failing course of action is a
mentally demanding activity that consumes significant mental resources.
Therefore, we propose that continuing a failing course of action (i.e. main-
taining the status quo in escalation situations) requires significantly more will-
power and mental resources than giving up a failing course of action. In other
words, we expect that people would need extra mental effort and resources in
order to continue a failing course of action in an attempt to turn things around.
Based on this, we predict that people who are in a state of ego depletion are
more likely to give up and stop pursuing a failing course of action. Thus, we
propose the following hypothesis: ego depletion decreases escalation of
commitment.

STUDY 1

Method
Experimental Design and Participants. Our first experiment involved a
basic randomised design comparing two conditions in which we tested the
causal effect of ego depletion on escalation of commitment. In order to deter-
mine the sample size of Study 1, we consulted the results of a meta-analysis of
ego depletion studies conducted by Hagger, Wood, Stiff, and Chatzisarantis
(2010). Hagger et al. (2010, p. 508) reported that “the averaged corrected stand-
ardized mean difference for ego depletion on self-control dependent measures
was d 5 .62”. Drawing on this finding, we conducted a power analysis using
G*Power 3 (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007) with the following
parameters: two independent groups t-test (two tailed), effect size (d 5 .62), sig-
nificance level (p 5 .05), and power (.8). The result of this power analysis indi-
cated the necessary total sample size of 84 (42 per group). Based on this, we
recruited 84 participants using Amazons Mechanical Turk, which has been
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
 EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 5
shown to be a high-quality source of data for psychology and social science
research (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). One participant did not fol-
low the instructions to complete the ego depletion task, thus we dropped the
response from this participant and used the responses from 83 participants (44
men and 39 women; mean age 5 35.76 years, SD 5 9.56, age range 5 22–67) in
the analyses reported in this paper.

Procedure. First, participants were asked to read an adapted version of

the escalation decision scenario developed by Arkes and Blumer (1985). Specif-
ically, participants were asked to play the role of the director of research and
development at a software development company that had invested $1 million
into a technology product that monitors the air quality of home or office and
sends alerts via a smartphone app. Participants learned that the project was 90
per cent complete, but that a rival company had announced a similar product
that is believed to be superior. Participants were then instructed that they
would be asked to decide whether or not to invest another $1 million into the
development of the air quality product. Before indicating their decision, partic-
ipants were asked to retype a short paragraph that appeared on the computer
screen as quickly as they could. The computer randomly assigned participants
to one of two conditions. In one condition, participants were asked to retype
the paragraph exactly as it appeared on the screen (the type-all-letter condi-
tion). In the other condition, participants were asked not to type any es or
spaces as they retyped the paragraph (the no-es condition). The rule in the
no-es condition is known to require individuals to use self-control in order to
override their natural inclination to type every letter (Rieger, 2004), and this
retyping task has been used to manipulate ego depletion in prior ego depletion
studies (Janssen, Fennis, & Pruyn, 2010). After completing the retyping task,
participants were asked to indicate “how likely is it that you will abandon the
air-quality control product?” on a 7-point scale (1 5 definitely would not aban-
don, 4 5 even chance, 7 5 definitely abandon). This scale was intended to mea-
sure an individuals willingness to discontinue a failing course of action
(Garland et al., 1990).
As a manipulation check, we assessed participants self-control effort using
two questions from Muraven, Shmueli, and Burkley (2006): (1) “how much
were you fighting against an urge on the retyping task?” and (2) “how much
did you have to control yourself on the retyping task?” Both questions were
measured on a 7-point scale ranging from not at all to extremely. We also
assessed participants level of effort required to complete the task by asking
“did the retyping task require much effort” on a 7-point scale ranging from
definitely no to definitely yes (Muraven et al., 2006). Lastly, we assessed the
level of cognitive depletion by asking “how much did you feel cognitively tired
after completing the retyping task” on a 7-point scale ranging from not at all
to extremely, adapted from Park, Glaser, and Knowles (2008). As control
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
6 LEE, KEIL AND WONG

variables, we measured participants mood and arousal using the Brief Mood
Introspection Scale (BMIS) (Mayer & Gaschke, 1988) and participants per-
ception about the likelihood of success “I think that the quality of this product
will be improved enough to be competitive in the market” and “I think this
product will eventually be successful in the market,” adapted from Moon
(2001). We also captured participants demographic information (age and gen-
der), because prior research found that older adults are less subject than
younger adults to escalation of commitment (Strough, Mehta, McFall, &
Schuller, 2008).

Results
We conducted an independent t-test and the results indicated that participants
in the ego depletion condition (i.e. the no-es condition) showed a greater will-
ingness to abandon the project (M 5 4.12, SD 5 1.66, N 5 41) than did partici-
pants in the non-ego depletion condition (i.e. the type-all-letter condition)
(M 5 3.14, SD 5 1.54, N 5 42), t(81) 5 2.79, p 5 .007, d 5 .61. We then exam-
ined the efficacy of our manipulation through a series of independent t-tests.
We found that the manipulation of ego depletion had a significant effect (in the
expected direction) on each of the three manipulation checks: self-control
effort (t(81) 5 5.31, p < .001, d 5 1.17), level of effort required to complete the
task (t(81) 5 3.78, p < .001, d 5 .83), and cognitive depletion (t(81) 5 2.42,
p 5 .018, d 5 .54). Further, the results of another independent t-test indicated
that ego depletion did not have a significant effect on pleasant-unpleasant
mood (BMIS) (p 5 .808) suggesting that the differences we observed cannot be
attributed to differences in mood that could have been triggered by the ego
depletion task. Finally, the results of an ANCOVA indicated that the effect of
ego depletion on the willingness to abandon the project (F(1,78) 5 5.29,
p 5 .024, g2p 5 .06) was significant in the presence of the covariates of
pleasant-unpleasant mood (BMIS), perception of success, and age. Overall,
these results provided initial evidence that individuals in a state of ego deple-
tion are less susceptible to escalation of commitment, thus supporting our
hypothesis.

STUDY 2

Method
Experimental Design and Participants. Our second experiment was
designed to confirm the effect of ego depletion on escalation of commitment
observed in Study 1, and to add robustness to the findings of our research. In
Study 2, which also involved a basic randomised design comparing two condi-
tions, we used a different manipulation of ego depletion and a different subject
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
 EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 7
pool. We introduced these changes in Study 2 in order to demonstrate the gen-
eralisability of the ego depletion effect found in Study 1. Study 2 was con-
ducted with undergraduate students enrolled in multiple sections of an
information systems course at a large urban university in the south-eastern
US. Similar to Experiment 1, we planned to recruit approximately 84 partici-
pants in Experiment 2. Although a total of 88 students took part in Experi-
ment 2, 14 responses were found to be incomplete, and thus we retained 74
complete responses for our analyses (51 men and 23 women; mean age 5 23.96
years, SD 5 5.06, age range 5 20–49).

Procedure. First, participants were asked to read short descriptions of

five information systems projects. Further, participants were presented with
scores of each project on ten risk factors (changing scope/objectives, failure to
manage end user expectation, lack of required knowledge/skills in the project
personnel, misunderstanding the requirements, lack of top management com-
mitment, insufficient/inappropriate staffing, introduction of new technology,
lack of frozen requirements, lack of adequate user involvement, and failure to
gain user commitment). Participants were told that each project was scored on
each of the ten risk factors and the score ranged from 1 to 5 with 1 representing
the lowest risk (good) and 5 representing the highest risk (bad). Participants
were then asked to carefully review the risk scores of each project and make a
recommendation of whether or not each project should get funded for initia-
tion. In evaluating each project and its risk scores, participants were asked to
follow the rule(s) provided. Specifically, in the non-ego depletion condition
participants were given one simple rule—“any project that received a 4 or
greater on misunderstanding the requirements should NOT get funded for
initiation”. In contrast, in the ego depletion condition participants were given
a set of seven complicated rules—for example, “any project that received a 4 or
greater on misunderstanding the requirements should NOT get funded for
initiation unless it received a 2 or lower on either lack of adequate user
involvement or on changing scope/objectives”. This latter condition required
greater self-regulation than the former condition, because it required more
attention in order to carefully apply the complicated rules in evaluating each of
the projects. Previous research has also operationalised self-control in terms of
required concentration or attentional focus (Baumeister et al., 1998). After
completing this task, all participants were asked to answer two questions which
were designed to assess the efficacy of the manipulation: “I feel mentally
exhausted after reviewing the risk assessment and making recommendations
based on them” and “reviewing the risk assessment and making recommenda-
tions was mentally exhausting for me,” adapted from Job, Dweck, and Walton
(2010). Both questions were measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from
strongly disagree to strongly agree.
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
8 LEE, KEIL AND WONG

Next, participants were asked to read an adapted version of the escalation

decision scenario developed by Arkes and Blumer (1985). Specifically, partici-
pants were asked to play the role of an IT project auditor at a software com-
pany. Participants were told that they had initiated a social media software
project 12 months ago and that their company had allocated $1 million to this
project based on their proposal. Participants were also told that although the
project was scheduled to be completed one month ago, the beta-testing process
took longer than anticipated and as a result the project fell behind schedule.
Furthermore, participants were informed that another software firm had
begun marketing a very similar product, which is easier to use, more secure,
and runs more compatibly in several web browsers. Participants were told that
90 per cent of the project budget had already been spent. After reading the sce-
nario, participants were asked to indicate: (1) their willingness to request fur-
ther funding from the executive committee in order to continue the project and
(2) their willingness to abandon the project. Both questions were measured on
a 7-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The first
question was intended to measure susceptibility to escalation of commitment
and the second question was intended to measure resistance to escalation of
commitment. Lastly, in order to control for possible changes in emotion
caused by the ego depletion task we asked participants to complete the
PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule) questionnaire (Watson,
Clark, & Tellegan, 1988). Participants were also asked to provide their demo-
graphic information (age and gender).

Results
We conducted an independent t-test and the results indicated that participants
in the ego depletion condition showed less willingness to continue the project
(M 5 4.07, SD 5 1.71, N 5 41) than did participants in the non-ego depletion
condition (M 5 4.91, SD 5 1.70, N 5 33), t(72) 5 2.10, p 5 .040, d 5 .49. Fur-
ther, the results of another independent t-test indicated that participants in the
ego depletion condition showed a greater willingness to abandon the project
(M 5 3.56, SD 5 1.83, N 5 41) than did participants in the non-ego depletion
condition (M 5 2.45, SD 5 1.75, N 5 33), t(72) 5 2.63, p 5 .010, d 5 .62. Next,
we examined the efficacy of our manipulation through an independent t-test
and found that the manipulation of ego depletion had a significant effect (in
the expected direction) (t(72) 5 7.98, p < .001, d 5 1.90). Lastly, the results of a
MANCOVA indicated that ego depletion had significant effects on both the
willingness to continue the project (F(1,67) 5 5.55, p 5 .021, g2p 5 .08) and the
willingness to abandon the project (F(1,67) 5 6.82, p 5 .011, g2p 5 .09) after
controlling for positive mood, negative mood, and age. The results that were
obtained in Study 2 confirmed the findings of Study 1 and provided additional
evidence that ego depletion can effectively reduce escalation of commitment.
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
 EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 9
DISCUSSION
The results of the two experiments that were reported here indicate that ego
depletion attenuates escalation of commitment. Since the two experiments
employed different manipulations and different subject pools, we can be confi-
dent that the results are robust. We believe that our findings are important
because they are counterintuitive to a common belief that a tired mind
decreases decision quality. In addition, our conceptualisation of escalation of
commitment is consistent with one accepted in the escalation literature:
decision-makers (1) allocate some resources (e.g. money and/or time) into a
project in the hope of attaining some goals; (2) receive negative feedback indi-
cating that “at the very least, they have not yet attained their goals”; and (3)
choose to invest further resources into the project despite the uncertainty about
whether such additional investments may lead to a positive outcome
(Brockner, 1992). Empirically, in our two experiments we adapted the classic
escalation scenario that was developed by Arkes and Blumer (1985) and has
been used in a number of prior escalation studies (e.g. Moon, 2001; Garland,
1990; and Wong, Kwong, & Ng, 2008), and this gives additional confidence to
the findings of this research.

Theoretical Implications
Most influential decision making theories—for example, Herbert Simons
(1957) bounded rationality notion and Daniel Kahnemans (1973) single
resource model of attention—suggest that people are more prone to decision
errors and biases as their mental resources become scarce. However, our
research provides an interesting empirical evidence that appears to represent
an apparent contradiction to prevailing wisdom regarding the impact of ego
depletion on decision-making.
Prior research has posited that individuals in a state of ego depletion will
tend to accept the status quo (Danzigera et al., 2011). This is believed to be
because ego depleted individuals prefer to reduce the use of mental resources.
Given this background, one might expect that ego depletion would cause indi-
viduals to escalate their commitment to a failing course of action as this would
be a way of maintaining the status quo. But, our results provide an apparent
contradiction to established theory in that ego depletion appears to encourage
de-escalation and a movement away from the status quo, rather than escala-
tion. The apparent contradiction can be reconciled as follows: if maintaining
the status quo is easy and does not demand mental resources, individuals in an
ego depleted state may prefer the status quo, as suggested by prior research
(e.g. Kahneman, 2013; Danzigera et al., 2011). On the other hand, if maintain-
ing the status quo demands additional mental resources (such as having to
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
10 LEE, KEIL AND WONG

justify a prior decision to initiate a failing course of action), individuals in an

ego depleted state may prefer to give up the status quo.
It is worth noting that the results of our research also appear to be consistent
with Wong, Yik, and Kwongs (2006) perspective on how individuals cope with
emotions in escalation situations. Specifically, Wong et al. (2006) argued and
found that negative emotion induces people to quit from a failing course of
action. We posit that people may need mental resources to suppress these nega-
tive emotions in order to continue a failing course of action. Under this logic, a
lack of sufficient mental resources to suppress these negative emotions may
lead to de-escalation. Overall, we believe our research offers valuable empirical
insights that in the context of escalation continuing a failing course of action
requires significant mental resources and people who are in a state of ego
depletion tend to give up the status quo by abandoning a failing course of
action.
Our findings are important for escalation research because the connection
between ones ability and escalation of commitment has not been previously
considered. In the management literature, it is known that general mental abil-
ity (GMA) positively influences job performance (Ferris, Witt, & Hochwarter,
2001; Salgado et al., 2003) and this knowledge may lead us to believe that men-
tal abilities are beneficial in the escalation decision context. However, our
research provides strong evidence that an ability to control oneself can cause
individuals to escalate their commitment to a failing course of action. This
finding highlights the fact that although ability can influence escalation of
commitment, it is actually a reduced or weakened ability that helps to avoid
being trapped in a failing course of action.
Lastly, our research offers fresh empirical insights regarding the theoretical
question of whether or not escalation is a mentally demanding activity. On the
one hand, one can argue that escalation behaviour results from an automatic
and fast way of thinking (Kahneman, 2013), such as trying to recoup a prior
loss—sunk cost—whereas withdrawing from a failing course of action may
involve a more deliberate and effortful way of thinking. From this perspective,
escalation can be viewed as mentally undemanding and de-escalation can be
viewed as mentally demanding. However, Wong et al. (2008) found that the
rational thinking style that uses a conscious and analytical information proc-
essing system actually increases escalation of commitment. Further, our results
suggest that continuing a failing course of action requires extra mental effort
to justify ones prior decision to initiate the failing course of action. From this
perspective, escalation can be viewed as mentally demanding and de-escalation
can be viewed as mentally undemanding (because withdrawing from a failing
course of action does not require such extra mental effort as one can simply
give up). With respect to this theoretical ambiguity in the escalation literature,
our research offers valuable empirical insight because it shows that limited
mental resources lead to de-ecalation, implying that choosing to escalate ones
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
 EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 11
commitment requires more mental resources and hence can be understood as
being mentally demanding.

Practical Implications and Directions for Future Research

In response to a call for more research about how to reduce decision biases and
improve decision-making (Milkman, Chugh, & Bazerman, 2009), some recent
studies have suggested strategies for dealing with or reducing escalation of
commitment (e.g. Molden and Hui, 2011 and Hafenbrack et al., 2014).
Extending this line of inquiry, our research suggests a new psychological strat-
egy for reducing escalation of commitment. While there are times when persist-
ence in organisational or personal settings could eventually lead to success,
there are also times when individuals may become locked into a failing course
of action because they feel they are “too close to quit” (Garland & Conlon,
1998) or they want to recoup a prior loss (Garland, 1990). In situations where
de-escalating from a previously chosen course of action is desirable, depleting
decision-makers mental resources could be a useful tactic. For example, when
a manager appears to be locked into a particular course of action and attempts
to make further investment despite negative feedback, one may give the man-
ager additional responsibility that could consume his or her mental resources
and doing so would help the manager give up the failing course of action. In
fact, we believe that psychological interventions for decision biases represent a
more practical alternative to dealing with escalation of commitment relative to
more sweeping organisational interventions that may be quite costly or time
consuming (such as replacing the decision-maker or relying on external sources
of pressure to persuade the decision-maker). In this regard, ego depletion may
be a particularly useful tactic for limiting escalation of commitment, because it
is so simple to induce. We therefore encourage future research in field settings
to determine if ego depletion can be successful in reducing escalation of com-
mitment. However, we also suggest that ego depletion be used with caution in
organisational settings, as ego depletion is known to cause undesired effects
such as reduced performance. Lastly, we encourage future research on whether
ego depletion can also have a positive effect on other decision biases.

Limitations
As with any research, our study is not without limitations. First, to probe the
connection between ego depletion and escalation of commitment, we con-
ducted two laboratory experiments. Kozlowski (2009) indicated that a new
research idea probably should first be tested in laboratory settings before it can
be applied in field settings; “laboratory investigations are better for demon-
strating that an effect can occur and for examining a phenomenon with preci-
sion. Field settings are better suited for showing that an effect does occur and
for building evidence that a lab phenomenon generalizes” (p. 1). Consistent
C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.
V
12 LEE, KEIL AND WONG

with these guidelines, we chose laboratory experiments because we were pri-

marily interested in identifying a causal relationship between ego depletion
and escalation of commitment and generalising our findings to theory.
Although the approach chosen in this research allowed us to achieve high
internal validity, we acknowledge that it did not allow us to account for all of
the complexities of actual work settings.
Second, we recruited undergraduate students and Amazons Mechanical
Turk workers as participants in our research and this may limit the generalis-
ability of our findings to actual work settings. It is worth noting, however, that
student subjects have been used both in prior ego depletion research (Baumeis-
ter et al., 1998; Gino et al., 2011; Job et al., 2010) and in prior escalation
research (Arkes & Blumer, 1985; Moon, 2001; Staw, 1976; Wong et al., 2006).
Furthermore, Amazons Mechanical Turk has been shown to be a high-quality
source of data for psychology and social science research (Buhrmester et al.,
2011). Still, one clear direction for future research is to investigate the extent to
which our findings can be generalised to actual work settings.

Conclusion
In conclusion, in this research rather than focusing on the negative consequen-
ces of ego depletion, we highlight the fact that there may be some circumstan-
ces in which ego depletion can actually have a positive effect, leading to
improved decision quality. Specifically, our research shows that ego depletion
can attenuate escalation of commitment.

REFERENCES
Arkes, H.R., & Blumer, C. (1985). The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Process, 35(1), 124–149.
Aronson, E. (1969). The theory of cognitive dissonance: A current perspective.
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 4(1), 1–34.
Augenblick, N. (2016). The sunk-cost fallacy in penny auctions. The Review of
Economic Studies, 83(1), 58–86.
Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Muraven, M., & Tice, D.M. (1998). Ego depletion:
Is the active self a limited resource? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
74(5), 1252–1265.
Bazerman, M.H., & Moore, D.A. (2013). Judgment in managerial decision making.
New York: Wiley.
Bowen, M.G. (1987). The escalation phenomenon reconsidered: Decision dilemmas
or decision errors? Academy of Management Review, 12(1), 52–66.
Brockner, J. (1992). The escalation of commitment to a failing course of action:
Toward theoretical progress. Academy of Management Review, 17(1), 39–61.
Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S.D. (2011). Amazons mechanical turk: A
new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological
Science, 6(1), 3–5.

C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.

V
 EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 13
Chun, M.M., & Potter, M.C. (1995). A two-stage model for multipletarget detection
in rapid serial visual presentation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
Perception and Performance, 21(1), 109–127.
Conlon, D.E., & Garland, H. (1994). The role of project completion information in
resource allocation decisions. Academy of Management Journal, 36(2), 402–413.
Converse, P.D., & DeShon, R.P. (2009). A tale of two tasks: Reversing the
self-regulatory resource depletion effect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(5),
1318–1324.
Danzigera, S., Levavb, J., & Avnaim-Pessoa, L. (2011). Extraneous factors in judicial
decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, 108(17), 6889–6892.
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible
statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical
sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191.
Ferris, G.R., Witt, L.A., & Hochwarter, W.A. (2001). Interaction of social skill and
general mental ability on job performance and salary. Journal of Applied Psychol-
ogy, 86(6), 1075–1082.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Garland, H. (1990). Throwing good money after bad: The effect of sunk costs on the
decision to escalate commitment to an ongoing project. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 75(6), 728–731.
Garland, H., & Conlon, D.E. (1998). Too close to quit: The role of project comple-
tion in maintaining commitment. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28(22),
2025–2048.
Garland, H., Sandefur, C.A., & Rogers, A.C. (1990). De-escalation of commitment
in oil exploration: When sunk costs and negative feedback coincide. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 75(6), 721–727.
Gino, F., Schweitzer, M.E., Mead, N.L., & Ariely, D. (2011). Unable to resist tempta-
tion: How self-control depletion promotes unethical behavior. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Process, 115(2), 191–203.
Hafenbrack, A.C., Kinias, Z., & Barsade, S.G. (2014). Debiasing the mind through
meditation: Mindfulness and the sunk-cost bias. Psychological Science, 25(2),
369–376.
Hagger, M.S., Wood, C., Stiff, C., & Chatzisarantis, N.L.D. (2010). Ego depletion
and the strength model of self-control: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin,
136(4), 495–525.
Janssen, L., Fennis, B.M., & Pruyn, A.T.H. (2010). Forewarned is forearmed: Con-
serving self-control strength to resist social influence. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 46(6), 911–921.
Job, V., Dweck, C.S., & Walton, G.M. (2010). Ego depletion—Is it all in your head?
Implicit theories about willpower affect self-regulation. Psychological Science,
21(11), 1686–1693.
Jolicoeur, P., & DellAcqua, R. (1998). The demonstration of short-term consolida-
tion. Cognitive Psychology, 36(2), 138–202.
Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.

V
14 LEE, KEIL AND WONG

Kahneman, D. (2013). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Keil, M. (1995). Pulling the plug: Software project management and the problem of
project escalation. MIS Quarterly, 19(4), 421–447.
Kozlowski, S.W.J. (2009). Editorial. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1), 1–4.
Ku, G. (2008). Learning to de-escalate: The effects of regret in escalation of
commitment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process, 105(2),
221–232.
Mayer, J.D., & Gaschke, Y.N. (1988). The experience and meta-experience of mood.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(1), 102–111.
Milkman, K.L., Chugh, D., & Bazerman, M.H. (2009). How can decision making be
improved? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(4), 379–383.
Molden, D.C., & Hui, C.M. (2011). Promoting de-escalation of commitment:
A regulatory-focus perspective on sunk costs. Psychological Science, 22(1),
8–12.
Moon, H. (2001). Looking forward and looking back: Integrating completion and
sunk-cost effects within an escalation-of-commitment progress decision. Journal
of Applied Psychology, 86(1), 104–113.
Muraven, M., Shmueli, D., & Burkley, E. (2006). Conserving self-control strength.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 524–537.
Odean, T. (1998). Are investors reluctant to realize their losses? Journal of Finance,
53(5), 1775–1798.
Park, S.H., Glaser, J., & Knowles, E.D. (2008). Implict motivation to control preju-
dice moderates the effect of cognitive depletion on unintended discrimination.
Social Cognition, 26(4), 401–419.
Potter, M.C. (1993). Very short-term conceptual memory. Memory & Cognition,
21(2), 156–161.
Rieger, M. (2004). Automatic keypress activation in skilled typing. Journal of Experi-
mental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30(3), 555–565.
Salgado, J.F., Anderson, N., Moscoso, S., Bertua, C., de Fruyt, F., & Rolland, J.P.
(2003). A meta-analytic study of general mental ability validity for different
occupations in the European community. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(6),
1068–1081.
Simon, H.A. (1957). Models of man: Social and rational. Oxford: Wiley.
Sleesman, D., Conlon, D.E., Mcnamara, G., & Miles, J.E. (2012). Cleaning up the
big muddy: A meta-analytic review of the determinants of escalation of commit-
ment. Academy of Management Journal, 55(3), 541–562.
Staw, B.M. (1976). Knee-deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment
to a chosen course of action. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Pro-
cess, 16(1), 27–44.
Staw, B.M. (1981). The escalation of commitment to a course of action. Academy of
Management Review, 6(4), 577–587.
Staw, B.M. (1986). Expo 86: An escalation prototype. Administrative Science Quar-
terly, 31(2), 274–297.
Strough, J., Mehta, C.M., McFall, J.P., & Schuller, K.L. (2008). Are older adults less
subject to the sunk-cost fallacy than younger adults? Psychological Science, 19(7),
650–652.

C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.

V
 EGO DEPLETION AND ESCALATION 15
Watson, D., Clark, L.A., & Tellegan, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief
measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personal-
ity and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070.
Wong, K.F.E. (2002). The relationship between attentional blink and psychological
refractory period. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 28(1), 54–71.
Wong, K.F.E. (2005). The role of risk in making decisions under escalation situa-
tions. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 54(4), 584–607.
Wong, K.F.E., Kwong, J.Y.Y., & Ng, C.K. (2008). When thinking rationally increases
biases: The role of rational thinking style in escalation of commitment. Applied
Psychology: An International Review, 57(2), 246–271.
Wong, K.F.E., Yik, M., & Kwong, J.Y. (2006). Understanding the emotional aspects
of escalation of commitment: The role of negative affect. Journal of Applied Psy-
chology, 91(2), 282–297.

C 2017 International Association of Applied Psychology.

V