History Main / SunkCostFallacy

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* Repairing something when either time or limited industrial capability make retaining the object more necessary over saving money. A great example is when HMS ''Belfast'', that warship on the Thames, was damaged by a mine during the second world war, it was deemed that the fastest repair solution would be more expensive than a new cruiser. That would have taken three years and dry dock space Britain didn't have however.

-->''I cheated, the lies that I told/Were for a future that I have seen/The death, the lives that I stole/The end has to justify the means.''

* The concept of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair the missing stair]] works like this in social psychology. The term refers to how people in a social group who engage in bad behavior -- abuse, lying, backstabbing, self-destruction, or other behavior that has to be "managed" somehow -- yet are allowed to continue to act that way because everyone else would rather work around the missing stair than deal with them. The sunk cost comes in when the others in the group continue to allow this long after they should have removed the missing stair, because that would be admitting that they wasted time trying to deal with someone who was just making things worse.

* When done badly, the policy doctrine of 'too big to fail' can become this. One such example was the car maker British Leyland, which was bailed out by the British Government in 1968, but still failed to reverse its long-term decline. Another example is the general concept of corporate welfare.
* Working at a crummy job for so long can be this for many. Even if there are little or no benefits, the hours being lousy, and the pay being awful, many people need stick with that job instead of quitting since getting another job can be difficult (and the other jobs that are available may very well be just as miserable and low-paying) and not working means not making any money.
* The trope is usually inverted when it comes to long hold times on customer service phone calls. While it may be temporarily satisfying to hang up and call back, all that accomplishes is losing your spot in the call queue and going to the very back of the line. In this situation, the escalation of commitment is perfectly justified...after all, the longer you have to hold on, the more precious of an opportunity is to actually get somebody on the line.

* Aresh, the ArcVillain of Jack's loyalty mission in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', uses a version of this to explain why he wants to restart the [[TrainingFromHell Pragia facility]] — the people running it did such horrible things to everyone there, including him, that they ''must'' have been pursuing some greater purpose, and its near-destruction during a riot means that all the pain that happened there was for nothing. Jack, meanwhile, is understandably scornful of the idea that the suffering caused at Pragia meant anything more profound than "the people running this place need to die".

* When done badly, the policy doctrine of 'too big to fail' can become this. One such example was the car maker British Leyland, which was bailed out by the British Government in 1968, but still failed to reverse its long-term decline. Another example is the general concept of corporate welfare.
* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'''s Redcloak suffers from this, as expressed in ''Recap/StartOfDarkness''; It's not that he believes in the Plan as much he believes that if he gives it up, it'll make all of the horrible things he's done worthless, in spite of being told from both his brother and [[BigBad Xykon]] himself what an empty excuse this is. Also, he continues to support Xykon despite being entirely too familiar with the lich's BadBoss habits and knowing that completing the Plan with Xykon will ''not'' work out in his favor, because he feels too invested to quit and find some other, saner arcane spellcaster to work with instead.
* [[spoiler: Locus]] from ''Machinima/RedVsBlue''. He has to keep following orders because admitting he has a choice now would mean admitting he had a choice in all his previous actions, and he can't face that.

* In the Fanfic/TriptychContinuum, this is the central reason the Crusade continues: the Cutie Mark Crusaders have essentially become fanatics in the name of their cause, and to stop would invalidate everything which had come before -- including all the accidents, disaster relief forms, reparations, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and tree sap]]. The Fallacy itself winds up being summarized in a speech by [[spoiler: Apple Bloom]], and the voicing of it is part of what finally [[spoiler:[[Recap/TriptychContinuumUnstableSale breaks the Crusade]]]].
--> [[spoiler: "Gotta do it for a day because y'try," she slowly said. "Then y'go for a week 'cause iffin y'don't, y'wasted the day. Then it's a moon, lots of moons, and then when it's a year, it's gotta be more. We keep goin' an' goin' 'cause if we ever ''stop'', then it means we wasted ''everything''. An' we could just keep goin' til we're grown up, out of school, but we won't have jobs because we don't have ''marks'' and the only thing we can do is look some more. It's nearly three years an' if Ah do it for one more day, it could turn into... It's too much, an' Ah think -- it's been too much for a while. Too ''long''. An' -- an' it ain't worth it no more."]]
* At the end of a "No Mercy" run (i.e. a [[spoiler:"[[KillEmAll kill everyone in the game]] including and especially major characters"]] run) of ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'', the FinalBoss points out that you're pressing forward with [[spoiler:your murdering spree]] not out of any sort of "good" or "evil" desire, but simply because you ''can'', and because you can, you feel like you ''have to'', even though there's no real benefit to persevering at this point. They also gladly point out that the best thing to do at this point is to seriously give up and do ''literally anything else.'' [[spoiler:Because really, [[PyrrhicVictory what do you personally have to gain from not only massacring the entire underground but then also destroying the entire world and selling your soul to reset the game at the cost of ruining all future good endings]]?]]
--> [[spoiler:i always thought the [[AddressingThePlayer anomaly]] was doing this cause they were unhappy. and when they got what they wanted, they would stop all this. and maybe all they needed was... i dunno. some good food, some bad laughs, some nice friends. but that's ridiculous, right? yeah, you're the type of person who won't EVER be happy. you'll keep [[SaveScumming consuming timelines]] over and over, until... well. hey. take it from me, kid. someday... you gotta learn when to QUIT. and that day's TODAY.]]

* An ''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}'' comic has a group of villagers decide to take a poorly built ship to war rather than cut their losses and have the months of hard work spent on building it be wasted. It doesn't end well for them.

* ''Literature/TheLicaniusTrilogy:'' A variant of this fallacy is part of why the loyalist faction of the Venerate stay loyal to Shammaeloth. It promises the power to rewrite the past, meaning that all the atrocities the Venerate committed to get where they are can be undone. And so the Venerate persist in their faith, even in the face of mounting evidence that they were lied to and Shammaeloth has nothing but pain and suffering in mind, because giving up on their loyalty to Shammaeloth would mean admitting that all their crimes can never be undone.

*** Consider utility in the case where you have sunk $11 dollars into something with a $5 prize which you could buy for $5 tomorrow. If you would look like a sucker if you let someone rip you off that badly, it may be entirely rational to break off the deal, buy the item from someone else, and burn the bridge to protect your reputation. Utility includes all things you value, not just the dollar amounts.

* Repairing something when either time or limited industrial capability make retaining the object more necessary over saving money. A great example is when HMS ''Belfast'', that warship on the Thames, was damaged by a mine during the second world war, it was deemed that the fastest repair solution would be more expensive than a new cruiser. That would have taken three years and dry dock space Britain didn't have however.
* Working at a crummy job for so long can be this for many. Even if there are little or no benefits, the hours being lousy, and the pay being awful, many people need stick with that job instead of quitting since getting another job can be difficult (and the other jobs that are available may very well be just as miserable and low-paying) and not working means not making any money.
* The trope is usually inverted when it comes to long hold times on customer service phone calls. While it may be temporarily satisfying to hang up and call back, all that accomplishes is losing your spot in the call queue and going to the very back of the line. In this situation, the escalation of commitment is perfectly justified...after all, the longer you have to hold on, the more precious of an opportunity is to actually get somebody on the line.
* The Website/JollyRogerTelephoneCompany is a web-based company that provides bots that are designed to waste telemarketer time by responding with pre-programmed routines and other time-wasters like "Yeah" and "uh huh" to make the caller think there's a real person on the other end of the line. In some cases, even after having ages of their time wasted with a bot, the callers will still keep going, thinking that they've already spent all this time already, so at this point they have to get ''something'' out of the call. They will grasp at any straw, anything at all the bot says that leads them to believe that the person on the other end of the line is actually interested in what they're pitching. But, of course, there is no person on the other end of the line, only a bot that can never give them what they want because it isn't programmed to do so.
----

* An ''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}'' comic provides the current page quote, where a group of villagers decide to take a poorly built ship to war rather than cut their losses and have the months of hard work spent on building it be wasted. It doesn't end well for them.

* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick'''s Redcloak suffers from this, as expressed in ''Recap/StartOfDarkness''; It's not that he believes in the Plan as much he believes that if he gives it up, it'll make all of the horrible things he's done worthless, in spite of being told from both his brother and [[BigBad Xykon]] himself what an empty excuse this is. Also, he continues to support Xykon despite being entirely too familiar with the lich's BadBoss habits and knowing that completing the Plan with Xykon will ''not'' work out in his favor, he feels too invested to quit and find some other, saner arcane spellcaster to work with instead.
* [[spoiler: Locus]] from ''Machinima/RedVsBlue''. He has to keep following orders because admitting he has a choice would mean admitting he had a choice in all his previous actions.

->'''Villager:''' A lot of people gave very selflessly to build this warship so we can go out and battle the Vikings. But the time has come to admit that hard work and hope are no substitute for actual knowledge. And that we've made a really shitty ship. If we sail this ship against the Vikings, we'll be massacred immediately. I suggest we break it up for scrap, never speak of it again.\\
'''Other Villager:''' Throw away months of hard work? Fuck that! Let's fight! ''[crowd cheers]''\\
''[cue burning ship]''\\
'''Vikings:''' ''[=[=]incredulous[=]=]'' Seriously, how does a boat just catch fire all by itself?
-->-- ''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}'', "[[http://oglaf.com/bilge/ Bilge]]"

* In psychology, this is generally related to cognitive dissonance theory, which is basically the idea that when people think of themselves one way but act in another way, they will try to rationalize it. Specifically, people think that they make good decisions, but when the decisions aren't paying off, they are likely to throw more effort after it to make the decisions good rather than admit that they made a bad decision.
* It's also known in social psychology as a great way to bring someone into a group. Cults are known for using this: How about you read a flyer? Sure, that cost nothing. Hey, why don't you answer this quiz on how happy you are with your life? Well... You've already read the flyer, that's not much more effort. How about going to a session? Once the new recruit has spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on seminars and training, they are unlikely to be willing to go cold turkey; cognitive dissonance becomes involved (as quitting would require admitting to themselves that they were duped, which is something that no one wants to think about themselves).
** ChurchOfHappyology is infamous for this, what with having to fork over $100,000 in the ''first fucking year''.
** ''Podcast/TheLastPodcastOnTheLeft'' brings this up whenever they discuss cults, noting that to question the leader means to ultimately question ''every single decision'' that person has made since joining the cult and if the years of life they have spent in the cult were AllForNothing. People who can't do that remain loyal to the cult long after it goes off the deep end.
* More serious (and ''much'' more complicated) in life or death matters. Dead troops are a sunk cost, but many nations across history have continued on losing military campaigns because their leadership could not face up to having wasted troops.
* This is often the reason people will spend lots of time on internet arguments, even after they're losing. Or as [[ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}} Scott Adams]] put it, "Nothing makes [someone] argue harder than being proven wrong."
* This is one of the main reasons why people continue to play [[MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRoleplayingGame MMOs]] even when they aren't enjoying them.
** [[AllegedlyFreeGame "Free-to-play" MMORPG games]]. After sinking substantial money into the game (to get powerups that nonpayers wouldn't have), the player feels compelled to continue, even when the grind is getting difficult. This is especially true of games where experience (or worse, levels) are lost for death. You pay up, or one lag-related death takes an enormous amount of experience. Despite getting to the point where even 0.10% experience takes hours while death loss takes only seconds, the player continues to play. It's worse in some ways than for subscription-based, since supposedly "nobody forced you to pay" (although the game itself may be balance-weighted toward payment, by making items scarce and leveling slow), making you feel personally committed rather than having paid what was effectively a usage cost.
** This is also common in many {{Allegedly Free Game}}s. Once you've spent money on it, even if the gameplay is entirely insipid, one feels the need to keep playing so that this money wasn't wasted — and if continuing play requires the player to blow even more cash, to the point that they could probably have bought a ''good'' game with the money they spent, so be it.
* In poker, some players will continue to play poor cards just because they've already sunk a lot of money into the pot, even when there's no realistic chance that they'll win. Technically speaking, being "pot-committed" is not this fallacy; see below under "looks like this fallacy but isn't."
* One example of this is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction dollar auction]]. An emcee decides to auction off a dollar with a starting bid of one cent (which may be adjusted for inflation) — but there's a catch. The high bidder gets the dollar, but the second-highest bidder still has to pay their bid and gets nothing. The bidding will start off with each of the bidders standing to profit, but once the high bid reaches 99 cents, the second bidder has to choose between losing 98 cents or bidding one dollar and making nothing. After this, the first bidder has to choose between losing 99 cents or bidding $1.01 and losing a cent. This process of bidding will continue even though neither side stands to gain from future bids, except that by 'winning' they lose about one dollar less than if they had lost.
** [[Film/WarGames Interesting game. The only winning move is not to play.]]
** Auction websites such as Quibid and Beezid work in a similar fashion, except that you have to purchase your bids for a much higher amount than the bid increments. To bid a price up by 10 cents, you might have to spend five dollars.
* Happens in labour disputes where management or unions try to recoup the losses from a strike or lockout, and that merely pushes the bargaining positions of the parties further apart.
* Within sociology, the combination of this and the MadonnaWhoreComplex often leads to girls feeling resigned to becoming sexually promiscuous after having had sex once. After all, they can only lose their virginity once and [[DefiledForever what does it matter after that]]? Good sex ed would help prevent that, as the risk of catching an STD or having to deal with unwanted pregnancy increases with each sexual encounter.
* The Dutch public transport card system started out as a bad idea, turned out to be a worse idea, became a ''giant'' money sink, and still the government refused to just fess up and admit their mistake. A few years later, it's currently being debated as the worst thing that ever happened in the history of Dutch transport. Attempts by the government to just buy out the company responsible for the mess are still failing miserably.
* A common example is an automobile owner near the end of their vehicle's functional life. So many of us end up trapped in this Fallacy and wind up spending good money on repairs to stretch out the life of a car that's already on its last legs, because to not keep driving the thing after investing so much in it just seems like a waste.
* Stephen Colbert, on ''Series/TheColbertReport'', summed it up quite succinctly when discussing the American dilemma of whether [[ColdBloodedTorture torture was justified]] since it (allegedly) helped to capture and kill a hated terrorist. Stephen's usual InsaneTrollLogic is applied to the point where, because America has already lost its beloved moral superiority by using torture, they have to ''keep'' torturing until it solves all of our problems, or:
--> "[[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/18/977051/-Brilliant-Stephen-Colbert-piece-on-renewed-torture-debate We must do whatever it takes to justify what we've already done.]]"
* Supporters of UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar and [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror the U.S. occupation of Iraq]] said that unless the U.S. continued the wars, the lives of soldiers who'd already died there would be wasted. Notably, during the troop surge for the Iraq War (a move that was deeply unpopular when it was first proposed), Bush deliberately used this exact phraseology. Lo and behold, support for the move suddenly shot up dramatically.
** The UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne poem ''In Flanders Fields'' by John [=McCrae=] echoes this sentiment, with the ghosts of the fallen telling the living to keep fighting so they will not have died in vain.
-->''Take up our quarrel with the foe:\\
To you from failing hands we throw\\
The torch; be yours to hold it high.\\
If ye break faith with us who die
-->We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
-->In Flanders fields.''
* Many victims of [[FourOneNineScam 419-scams]] tragically fall prey to this mentality, often forcing themselves to sink even more money into the hundreds or thousands (or even ''hundreds of thousands'') of dollars they've already been scammed out of in the hopes that there ''would'' be a payout at some point. (Imagine the victim thinking: "I've already paid $500 to bribe customs, $400 to establish connections with the South African shipping commission, and $2500 to resolve that problem with the uncooperative government permit issuer, what can I lose with another $800 to get that $30 billion worth of gold bullion past U.S. Customs?")
** However, a good scambaiter is able to turn the tables on the ''scammer'' in the same way, usually with hilarious effect. (Imagine the scammer thinking: "I've already posed for a photograph of me with a loaf of bread on my head, carved a wooden replica of a UsefulNotes/{{Commodore 64}} keyboard and gotten a tattoo reading "Baited by Shiver". Surely this priest will give me $270000 soon!")
* [[TheGamblingAddict Gambling addictions]] usually fall into this trope. While people who are hooked on gambling are hooked on the rush of risking everything to win big, other addicted gamblers will gladly keep blowing money on a game until they can win back everything they lost just because they already lost money in the first place. For example, if someone were to lose $5000 in a game, they will keep spending money on that game until they can win back that $5000 plus the additional money spent to get back the initial losses. In other words, "I already invested so much money in this game, I may as well keep playing until I can win everything back." Overlaps with GamblersFallacy, because obviously a losing streak means you have to win something soon, maybe the very next game.
** The same applies to gacha video games, where people will gladly throw hundreds — if not thousands — at the game for the one specific character or item they want, regardless of how valuable the other things they aren't focused on but obtain in the process are. There's a subversion in ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'', where spending "only" up to[[note]]Each piece of in-game currency functionally counts as one cent, so you can do it entirely with in-game currency[[/note]] $900 in a brief period of time allows you to pick whichever character you want to join you for free, due to a legal incident stemming from a player spending '''''[[https://www.geek.com/games/japanese-gamer-spends-6065-unlocking-mobile-rpg-character-1649554/ $6065 for one character]]'''''.
* This phenomenon is also referred to as the "Concorde fallacy". The Concorde supersonic airliner was enormously expensive to develop and maintain, and never made enough of a profit to recoup its development costs. In its first years in service, its ticket sales weren't even enough to offset the costs of operating it; the main reason Air France and British Airways kept the Concorde in service rather than promptly selling them for scrap was that to do otherwise after investing so much in the development of the plane would have been wasteful (although also because the Concorde was a prestige symbol for both France and the UK). On the other hand, British Airways ''did'' eventually manage to make a profit from the Concorde after a survey revealed that prospective flyers thought that Concorde tickets were about twice as expensive as they actually were and BA raised their prices to match those expectations; it still wasn't enough to offset the vast development costs, but, then again, the two airlines weren't paying for those (an airliner can be a net loss for its manufacturer yet still be profitable to operate, a situation in which the Concorde has a lot of company).
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_fever Go Fever]] is the term coined by NASA for when a launch or project is rushed while overlooking mistakes. It's the horrible cross between the sunk cost fallacy and [[TheComplainerIsAlwaysWrong groupthink]]. This contributed to some of NASA's worst accidents. "[[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/get-there-itis Get-there-itis]]" is a similar term in general avation. It's when pilots try to fly even when conditions are too bad to continue the flight. Even airline pilots are susceptible. It's believed to be a factor in the crash of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_1420 American Airlines Flight 1420]] in 1999, as both pilots took unnecessary risks flying into a thunderstorm because they were approaching their duty limits.
* Happens in sports a lot. When a big-name player signs a big-money contract then starts sucking, a lot of teams will continue to play him rather than exploring other options. Granted, this might have something to do with perception (signing a guy to a huge contract then benching him immediately would look very bad).
** There are also merchandising aspects to consider (perhaps playing him will leading to increased sales items with the player's name/likeness at the gift shop of).
** They are likely going to have to be paid either way and count against the salary cap as well (if there's one in place).
** There is usually a high chance that the team is operating without a good back-up player (or the back-up only possesses a functional knowledge of the team's playbook) if they're willing to invest so much of their time and money in their star player.
** There is also the concept of a Replacement Player, or the guy you can get in uniform right away. Sports have a long-tailed, skewed distribution of talent. The key idea is that most professional players are ''below'' average, and so ''average'' and better players are hard to get. Replacement players, however, are readily available. A former superstar having a mediocre season is still usually better than average — let alone whoever can be readily found to take their place. So it can still make sense to keep that fallen superstar on staff.
*** Alex Rodriguez, the poster-boy for overpaid, past-their-prime star, is a good case study. As of early June 2015, he is putting up an On-Base Plus Slugging (OPS) of 0.880 (a rough measure of offensive contribution). The American League average in 2014 was 0.706, making A-Rod still better than average. This would rate him a Very Good hitter in most rating schemes. A-Rod has ''never'' had a season where he has been average or worse as measured by OPS. More advanced metrics exist, and they generally show that A-Rod was always worth a few wins above an Average player (except in 2013) and worth a lot more than a Replacement Player. In that case, keeping A-Rod's overpriced bat in the line-up is ''not'' this fallacy if you're stuck with him - or if you happen to have a massive cash reserve and are willing to blow it for marginal gains.
** It stands to note that when the front office changes, the new people don't have the history signing the player and as such are much more likely to attempt to get out of the contract if at all possible.
* Any large-scale project one party already invested large sums of money in only to see the project needing more and more cash due to unforeseen problems, missed deadlines, etc.
** In a fictional example, ''{{Film/Cube}}'' is a case of this. Worth is convinced that the titular maze ''used'' to have a reason for existing, but the original creator was no longer involved, and nobody wanted to be the first to pull the plug because "you either use it, or admit it's pointless."
* How many people (probably even some reading this very page) have been (or currently are) in a relationship that they ''know'' is [[TheMasochismTango unhappy, unhealthy, and/or isn't going anywhere]], but decide to stay because they've known their partner for so long and can't imagine life without them? This especially applies to abusive relationships, as the abuse victim has poured a lot of energy into trying to [[LoveRedeems change]] the abuser, an effort they think will be wasted if they leave.
* One theory behind why TheMontyHallProblem is...well, a ''problem'' involves this trope. Essentially, this trope causes people to cling to their initial choice of door, even after the probability (that is, that your chance of winning the car is 1/3 if you stay with your original choice and is 2/3 if you switch) has been explained to them; people feel possessive in their initial choice, and dislike the idea that they might not have picked the car on their first choice. This is combined with the fallacy of people feeling more comfortable failing due to a lack of action (aka not changing doors) than they do due to an active choice (aka changing doors and happening to not get the car). This trope is just one extra reason why the mathematical facts behind the problem end up feeling counter-intuitive.
%%* Parodied in [[http://www.angryflower.com/smashi.html this]] ''Webcomic/BobTheAngryFlower'' strip.
* Competitions whose prize money is based around a pot can easily lead players into this. By paying some certain amount, a player is allowed to compete for a bit. If there are competitors already ahead of him or her when time runs out, he or she is likely to pay more to continue to compete in hopes of beating those people. If he or she is already on top, the player is ''still'' more likely to pay more out of fear that the competitors could outdo him or her when he or she is not playing. The competitions set up by the Professional and Amateur {{Pinball}} association function like this, and competitive players often sink hundreds of dollars in hopes of getting that higher score on that one machine. (Such competitions have a strong overlap with Gambler's Fallacy, though, due to the high luck factor that pinball has.)

'''Vikings:''' ''[=[=][[YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe incredulous]][=]=]'' [[EpicFail Seriously, how does a boat just catch fire all by itself?]]

'''Vikings:''' ''[incredulous]'' Seriously, how does a boat just catch fire all by itself?

* In psychology this is generally related to cognitive dissonance theory, which is basically the idea that when people think of themselves one way but act in another way, they will try to rationalize it. Specifically, people think they make good decisions, but when the decisions aren't paying off, they throw more effort after it to make the decisions good rather than admit they made a bad decision.
* It's also known in social psychology as a great way to bring someone into a group. Cults are known for using this: How about you read a flyer? Sure, that cost nothing. Hey, why don't you answer this quiz on how happy you are with your life? Well... You've already read the flyer, that's not much more effort. How about going to a session? Once the new recruit has spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on seminars and training, they are unlikely to be willing to go cold turkey; cognitive dissonance becomes involved (as quitting would require admitting to themselves that they were duped, which is something no one wants to think about themselves).

** This is also common in many {{Allegedly Free Game}}s. Once you've spent money on it, even if the gameplay is entirely insipid, one feels the need to keep playing so that this money wasn't wasted - and if continuing play requires the player to blow even more cash, to the point that they could probably have bought a ''good'' game with the money they spent, so be it.

* One example of this is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction dollar auction]]. An emcee decides to auction off a dollar with a starting bid of one cent (which may be adjusted for inflation) - but there's a catch. The high bidder gets the dollar, but the second-highest bidder still has to pay their bid and gets nothing. The bidding will start off with each of the bidders standing to profit, but once the high bid reaches 99 cents, the second bidder has to choose between losing 98 cents or bidding one dollar and making nothing. After this, the first bidder has to choose between losing 99 cents or bidding $1.01 and losing a cent. This process of bidding will continue even though neither side stands to gain from future bids, except that by 'winning' they lose about one dollar less than if they had lost.

* Within sociology, the combination of this and the MadonnaWhoreComplex often leads to girls feeling resigned to becoming sexually promiscuous after having had sex once. After all, they can only lose their virginity once and what does it matter after that? Good sex ed would help prevent that, as the risk of catching an STD or having to deal with unwanted pregnancy increases with each sexual encounter.

** The same applies to gacha video games, where people will gladly throw hundreds - if not thousands - at the game for the one specific character or item they want, regardless of how valuable the other things they aren't focused on but obtain in the process are. There's a subversion in ''VideoGame/GranblueFantasy'', where spending "only" up to[[note]]Each piece of in-game currency functionally counts as one cent, so you can do it entirely with in-game currency[[/note]] $900 in a brief period of time allows you to pick whichever character you want to join you for free, due to a legal incident stemming from a player spending '''''[[https://www.geek.com/games/japanese-gamer-spends-6065-unlocking-mobile-rpg-character-1649554/ $6065 for one character]]'''''.

** There is usually a high chance the team is operating without a good back-up player (or the back-up only possesses a functional knowledge of the team's playbook) if they're willing to invest so much of their time and money in their star player.
** There is also the concept of a Replacement Player, or the guy you can get in uniform right away. Sports have a long-tailed, skewed distribution of talent. The key idea is that most professional players are ''below'' average, and so ''average'' and better players are hard to get. Replacement players, however, are readily available. A former superstar having a mediocre season is still usually better than average - let alone whoever can be readily found to take their place. So it can still make sense to keep that fallen superstar on staff.

* Competitions whose prize money is based around a pot can easily lead players into this. By paying some certain amount, a player is allowed to compete for a bit. If there are competitors already ahead of him or her when time runs out, he or she is likely to pay more to continue to compete in hopes of beating those people. If he or she is already on top, the player is ''still'' more likely to pay more out of fear that the competitors could outdo him or her when he or she is not playing. The competitions set up by the Professional and Amateur {{Pinball}} association function like this, and competitive players often sink hundreds of dollars in hopes of getting that higher score on that one machine. (Such competitions have a strong overlap with Gambler's Fallacy though, due to the high luck factor pinball has.)
* Aresh, the ArcVillain of Jack's loyalty mission in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'', uses a version of this to explain why he wants to restart the [[TrainingFromHell Pragia facility]] - the people running it did such horrible things to everyone there, including him, that they ''must'' have been pursuing some greater purpose, and its near-destruction during a riot means that all the pain that happened there was for nothing. Jack, meanwhile, is understandably scornful of the idea that the suffering caused at Pragia meant anything more profound than "the people running this place need to die".

* Supporters of UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar and [[TheWarOnTerror the U.S. occupation of Iraq]] said that unless the U.S. continued the wars, the lives of soldiers who'd already died there would be wasted. Notably, during the troop surge for the Iraq War (a move that was deeply unpopular when it was first proposed), Bush deliberately used this exact phraseology. Lo and behold, support for the move suddenly shot up dramatically.

-->''Take up our quarrel with the foe:
-->To you from failing hands we throw
-->The torch; be yours to hold it high.
-->If ye break faith with us who die

* Reacher Gilt's scam in ''Discworld/GoingPostal'' relies heavily on this. Even as the service on the Grand Trunk semaphore line gets worse and worse, he sweet-talks investors and board-members into "throwing good money after bad" while pocketing most of it and covering it up with tricky accounting and corporate buzzwords like "embracing diversity" and "synergistically". [[BoxedCrook Not-quite-reformed con artist]] Moist von Lipwig is equal parts impressed and [[EveryoneHasStandards disgusted]] when he realizes what Gilt is up to.

* The Website/JollyRogerTelephoneCompany is a web-based company that provides bots that are designed to waste telemarketer time by responding with pre-programmed routines and other time-wasters like "Yeah" and "uh huh" to make the caller think there's a real person on the other end of the line. In some cases, even after having ages of their time wasted with a bot, the callers will still keep going, thinking that they've already spent all this time already, so at this point they have to get ''something'' out of the call. They will grasp at any straw, anything at all the bot says that leads them to believe that the person on the other end of the line is actually interested in what they're pitching.

* An ''Webcomic/{{Oglaf}}'' comic provides the current page quote, where a group of villagers decide to take a poorly built ship]] to war rather than cut their losses and have the months of hard work spent on building it be wasted. It doesn't end well for them.

* The trope is usually inverted when it comes to long hold times on customer service phone calls. While it may be temporarily satisfying to hang up and call back, all that accomplishes is losing your spot in the call queue and going to the very back of the line. In this situation, the escalation of commitment is perfectly justified...after all, the longer you have to hold on, the more precious of an opportunity is to actually get somebody on the line.

** In a fictional example, ''{{Film/Cube}}'' is a case of this, as Worth is convinced that the titular maze ''used'' to have a reason for existing, but the original creator was no longer involved, and nobody wanted to be the first to pull the plug, saying "you either use it, or admit it's pointless."