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When you lose something permanently, it hurts. The drive to mitigate
this negative emotion leads to strange behaviors. Have you ever gone to
see a movie only to realize within 15 minutes or so you are watching one
of the worst films ever made, but you sat through it anyway? You didn’t
want to waste the money, so you slid back in your chair and suffered.
Maybe you once bought non-refundable tickets to a concert, and when the
night arrived you felt sick, or tired, or hung over. Perhaps something
more appealing was happening at the same time. You still went, even
though you didn’t want to, in order to justify spending money you knew
you could never get back. What about that time you made it back home
with a bag of tacos, and after the first bite you suspected they might
have been filled with salsa-infused dog food, but you ate them anyway
not wanting to waste both money and food? If you’ve experienced a version of any of these, congratulations, you fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy.
It could be a degree you want to change, or a career you want to escape,
or a relationship you know is rotten. You don’t return to it over and
over again to create good experiences and pleasant memories but to hold
back the negative emotions you expect to feel if you accept the loss of
time, effort, money or whatever else you have invested.
If you dropped your cell phone over the edge of a cruise ship, you would
need James Cameron’s unmanned submarine fleet to find it again. Sure,
you could spend a small fortune to retrieve it, but you wouldn’t throw
good money after bad. Laid out like this, logical and rational and easy
to pick apart, you can pat yourself on the back for being such a
reasonable human. Unfortunately, the sunk costs in life aren’t always so
easy to see. When something is gone forever it can be difficult to
realize it. The past isn’t as tangible a concept as the sea floor, yet
it is just as untouchable. What is left behind is just as irretrievable.
-
David McRaney
*Taken out of context*
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