Prior Commitment and Information Recall

Abstract

Responsibility is related to escalation of commitment, a phenomenon in which individuals continue to invest in a failing course of action despite evidence that suggests that continued investment is unwise. Prior research indicates that individuals making multiple decisions as part of a sequential task are likely to engage in escalation behavior (Brockner, 1992). Investigators of escalation have not examined cognitive by-products of the decision-making process. In this study, the number of decisions, e.g., one or two, was used to manipulate the amount of responsibility. It was predicted that subjects making multiple decisions would remember more information supporting their initial decision than those who made only a single final decision. Analysis indicated that proportion recalled was the same for both groups. It appears that memory for the information used in the decision-making process is not related to amount of responsibility.