Escalation of commitment

The Escalating Commitment or Entrapment designated an individual tendency to bound by an earlier decision made to feel and to rely on the provision of additional resources, although this decision has so far proved ineffective ( cf. Brockner & Rubin, 1985; Staw & Ross, 1987). For explanation of entrapment among others, individual perceptual distortions in the form of selective information acquisition, dissonance effects are assumed ( justification of the already made ​​effort to avoid the admission that one has nothing hard ) and an individual tendency to impression management ( face-saving ) (see Staw, 1997). Entrapment can be reduced by using certain techniques, and has been studied from the viewpoint of groups.

For example, a bank employee granted a start-up a loan in the amount of 100,000 euros. Although it should be noted after a year that the company was founded is run only with little success and the future is little prospect of improvement, the employee granted a further loan of 50,000 euros for the financial security of the company to face himself and his superiors having to admit a mistake.