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Record W2111046244 · doi:10.1111/ecin.12287

THE EVOLUTIONARY LOGIC OF HONORING SUNK COSTS

2015· article· en· W2111046244 on OpenAlexaff
Mukesh Eswaran, Hugh M. Neary

Bibliographic record

VenueEconomic Inquiry · 2015
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldDecision Sciences
TopicDecision-Making and Behavioral Economics
Canadian institutionsUniversity of British Columbia
Fundersnot available
KeywordsSunk costsCognitive dissonanceEconomicsPhenomenonFunction (biology)Positive economicsMicroeconomicsNeoclassical economicsPsychologySocial psychologyEpistemology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Although economics claims that sunk costs should not figure in current decision‐making, there is ample evidence to suggest that people squander resources by honoring bygones. We argue that such wastage of resources was tolerated in our evolutionary past by Nature because it served fitness‐enhancing functions. In this study, we propose and model one such function. We demonstrate how the honoring of sunk costs could have arisen as a commitment device that Nature found expedient for scenarios where conflicts over temptations between the emotional and rational centers of the brain might sabotage long‐term investments. By applying this idea to the self‐concept, we argue that this model provides a rationale for cognitive dissonance, a well‐established phenomenon in social psychology. (JELD01, D03)

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.010
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.008
Threshold uncertainty score0.028

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.010
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.008
Scholarly communication0.0040.004
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0030.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0080.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.353
GPT teacher head0.444
Teacher spread0.091 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations23
Published2015
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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