Exhibit 1196 ยท Journal article (experiment)
Knee-deep in the big muddy: a study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action
Results showed that persons committed the greatest amount of resources to a previously chosen course of action when they were personally responsible for negative consequences.
Role-play experiment with 240 business students deciding how to allocate research and development funds. Participants who had personally chosen the earlier course committed the most further resources after bad outcomes. Staw frames the effect as self-justification and cites the Vietnam policy record as a governmental example.
- Source
- Barry M. Staw, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 16: 27-44
- Date
- 1976
- Quoted from
- Abstract, p. 27
- Grade
- Peer-reviewed
- Document
- https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90005-2
- Accessed
- 2026-11-10
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit
- Note
- Read in the full text (gwern.net copy of the journal PDF). Student role-play design; later replications are mixed (FORRT replication atlas lists Bialek et al. 2021 as a failed replication and Schultze and Schulz-Hardt 2022 as mixed; atlas page not read in full).