Individuals often allow prior investments of time, money or effort to influence their current behavior. A tendency to allow previous investments to impact further investment, referred to as the sunk-cost fallacy, may be related to adverse psychological health. Unfortunately, little is known about the relation between the sunk-cost fallacy and psychological symptoms or help seeking. The current study used a relatively novel approach (i.e., Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing [AMT] service) to examine various aspects of psychological health in internet users (n = 1053) that did and did not commit the sunk-cost fallacy. In this observational study, individuals logged on to AMT, selected the “decision making survey” amongst the array of currently available tasks, and completed the approximately 200-question survey (which included a two-trial sunk cost task, the brief symptom inventory 18, the Binge Eating Scale, portions of the SF-8 health survey, and other questions about treatment utilization). Individuals that committed the fallacy reported a greater number of symptoms related to Binge Eating Disorder and Depression, being bothered more by emotional problems, yet waited longer to seek assistance when feeling ill. The current findings are discussed in relation to promoting help-seeking behavior amongst individuals that commit this logical fallacy.

Abstract. The sunk-cost fallacy (SCF) occurs when an individual makes an investment with a low probability of a payoff because an earlier investment was made. The investments may be time, effort, or money. Previous researchers showed that larger prior investments were more likely to lead to the SCF than lower investments were, though little research has been focused on comparing investment types. There are several theories of the SCF, but few have implicated loss aversion, the higher sensitivity to losses than to gains, as a potential factor. We studied the differential effects of investment amount and type on the occurrence of the SCF and explored loss aversion as a potential explanation of these differences. There were 168 participants, who completed a sunk-cost task as well as an endowment-effect task, which was a measure of loss aversion. A 3 3 mixed-design ANCOVA was used in which the SCF score was the dependent variable and loss-aversion scores were used as a covariate. The SCF occurred most often with money, less with time, and least with effort. Loss aversion displayed a weak negative relation to the SCF.

- Special pleading – where a proponent of a position attempts to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule or principle without justifying the exemption. - Sunk cost fallacy – where what we have invested leads us to invest more. - Wrong direction – cause and effect are reversed. The cause is said to be the effect and vice versa. Faulty generalizations Faulty generalizations are made when one reaches a conclusion from weak premises. Unlike fallacies of relevance, in fallacies of defective induction, the premises are related to the conclusions—yet only weakly buttress the conclusions. A faulty generalization is thus produced. - Accident – an exception to a generalization is ignored. - Cherry picking (suppressed evidence, incomplete evidence) – act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. - False analogy – apples and oranges: an argument by analogy in which the analogy is poorly suited.

Military stalemate creates several key challenges as kinetic warfare devolves into static defenses. Moreover, a psychological phenomenon known as the sunk cost fallacy directly affects decision-making under conditions of military stalemate. Subsequent decision-making becomes biased by unrecoverable losses incurred from previous decisions. Commanders could then choose suboptimal or irrational plans because they are allowing their future actions to be dictated by past events. This discussion examines the sunk cost fallacy within the context of the most emblematic case of military stalemate—trench warfare in World War I. Several principles are offered as means to break stalemate and create asymmetric advantages.