The Effects of Anxiety and Autism Spectrum Disorder on Sunk Cost Effect
The sunk cost effect is a concept that is relevant across a wide range of fields. This effect is defined as “the inability to ignore unrecoverable prior investments when making decisions about the future” (Lam). The sunk cost effect works to affect decision making, and given this, it is easy to see how this effect can be important to the fields of economics, psychology, medicine, and more. There has been a substantial amount of research done on the sunk cost effect in humans, however much of this research lacks biological understanding of this effect. Interestingly, newer research has emerged investigating the relationship between mental health disorders and the sunk cost effect. Through incorporating the findings from this research and methods used to study the sunk cost effect in mice, it may be possible to reach a biological understanding of the sunk cost effect.
Lam et. al (2021) conducted a study to investigate the relationship between individuals with high levels of anxiety and their susceptibility to the sunk cost effect. Given various tendencies of people with high levels of anxiety, such as the tendency to weigh potential losses more than gains, the researchers predicted that individuals with high levels of anxiety would be more susceptible to, and therefore engage more with the sunk cost fallacy when decision making. Additionally, these researchers examined the relationship of cognitive reappraisal and the sunk cost effect in individuals with high levels of anxiety. Cognitive reappraisal is “an emotion regulation strategy that emphasizes the reinterpretation of information,” and therefore researchers predicted it “might have an opposite effect of rumination and counteract biases associated with anxiety that could contribute to sunk cost fallacy” (Lam). This research relied on self-report measures. The researchers findings upheld their first hypothesis, however, researchers found that cognitive reappraisal did not correlate with a higher resistance to the sunk cost effect. This is notable, showing that at least this cognitive method did not have an effect on this sunk cost effect, suggesting the possibility for biological reasonings that should be investigated.
Another interesting study investigated the relationship between the sunk cost effect and individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Given that “individuals with ASD show reduced sensitivity to context stimuli and make more rational and consistent choices in experimental situations,” Fujino et. al (2019) hypothesized that individuals with ASD would have higher resistance to the sunk cost effect. These researchers conducted a study using hypothetical situations to observe decision making processes between individuals with ASD and neurotypical individuals. Their results supported their hypothesis, further showing possible effects of neurological and mental health conditions on the cognitive bias of the sunk cost fallacy.
A notable technique was developed by Sweis et. al (2018) that showed that the sunk cost effect is present in the decision making of mice. Through training mice and rats in a task termed “Restaurant Row,” researchers were able to identify the presence of and observe the sunk cost effect in these nonhuman animals. Through identifying this cognitive bias in nonhuman animals, the opportunities for research expand. I think that an interesting set of research could be done to examine if mimicking anxiety or autism spectrum disorder in mice trained to use “Restaurant Row”. Through combining this technology and the findings from human research, researchers may be able to further investigate biological factors that are important for understanding this cognitive bias.
Fujino, J., Tei, S., Itahashi, T. et al. Sunk Cost Effect in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 49, 1–10 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3679-6
Lam, J.C., Yoon, K.L. Why Change Now? Cognitive Reappraisal Moderates the Relation between Anxiety and Resistance to Sunk Cost. J Psychopathol Behav Assess (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-020-09857-w
Sweis, B. M., Abram, S. V., Schmidt, B. J., Seeland, K. D., MacDonald, A. W., Thomas, M. J., & Redish, A. D. (2018). Sensitivity to "sunk costs" in mice, rats, and humans. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6398/178.full.
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