Opinion | There's a Name for the Trap Joe Biden Faces - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...-biden-president-election.html
escalation psychology commitment doubling-down sunk trap
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this trap: escalation of commitment to a losing course of action. In the face of impending failure, extensive evidence shows that instead of rethinking our plans, we often double down on our decisions.
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we can’t know for sure which decisions will turn out to be good. But decades of research led by the organizational psychologist Barry Staw have identified a few conditions that make people especially likely to persist on ill-fated paths.
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Some of the worst leadership decisions of our time can be traced to escalation of commitment. Many people lost their lives because American presidents pursued a futile war in Vietnam — and continued searching for weapons of mass destruction that weren’t in Iraq.
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Escalation of commitment helps to explain why leaders are often so reluctant to loosen their grip on power. Losing a high-status position can make them feel as if they’re losing their place in the world. It leaves them with bruised egos and wounded pride.
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we use our big brains not to make rational decisions, but rather to rationalize the decisions we’ve already made
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Escalation is likely when people are directly responsible for and publicly attached to a decision, when it has been a long journey and the end is in sight, and when they have reasons to be confident that they can succeed.
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the people closest to a leader are precisely the ones who are most susceptible to confirmation bias. They’re too personally invested in his success and too likely to dismiss warning signs.
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What Mr. Biden needs is not a support network but a challenge network — people who have the will to put the country’s interests ahead of his and the skill to coldly assess his chances.