Keywords
choice behavior
forced choice
self-control
How to Cite
Abstract
The sunk costs effect is defined as the tendency to persist in an endeavor once an investment has been made. This project evaluated whether this effect occurs after making a behavioral investment and if forced and free responses have similar effects upon subsequent behavioral persistence. Subjects, 90 students, divided in three groups, were exposed to three conditions of 0, 60 and 110 forced responses in FR 350 schedules. Persistence increased as free responses increased, suggesting that the sunk cost effect is produced by a freely chosen behavioral investment. It was concluded that the sunk cost effect is produced by a behavioral investment and that happens only if each instance of investment is freely chosenThis journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights. Approving the intervention of the work (review, copy-editing, translation, layout) and the following outreach, are granted through an use license and not through an assignment of rights. This means the journal and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana cannot be held responsible for any ethical malpractice by the authors. As a consequence of the protection granted by the use license, the journal is not required to publish recantations or modify information already published, unless the errata stems from the editorial management process. Publishing contents in this journal does not generate royalties for contributors.