The Impact Of Partition Priming And Cognition Needs On Escalation Of Commitment

Escalation of commitment refers to a phenomenon when decision makers faced a the failure consequences,they still decided to continue to invest in the previous action. Since the concept of the escalation of commitment was presented by Staw in 1976,this phenomenon became a hot study spot, Many researchers have presented that the self-justification theory, decision dilemma theory and prospect theory, to explore the psychological mechanism of escalation of commitment. It had been demonstrated to be influenced by initial responsibility, project completion and sunk cost. However research on partition priming —which is existing in probability judgment, was the relative lack of empirical research.It only considered the impact of difference way of partition on escalation of commitment,And did not considered the impact of the different nature of options on escalation of commitment.In addition, there was no comprehensive consideration of the impact of individual differences on escalation of commitment. This article attempted to explore the impact of partition priming and cognition needs on escalation of commitment.This article used merchant investment in real life as the decision making task.Study 1 explored the impact of alternative option, s partition conditions and cognition needs on escalation of commitment. Study 2 explored the impact of escalation option,s partition priming and cognition needs on escalation of commitment,by manipulated partition priming into partition condition and category property.The results showed that:1.The partition priming of alternative option had a significant impact on escalation of commitment, participants who were under the explicit condition of alternative options had much more escalation of commitment than who were under the implicit condition of alternative options.2.The partition condition of escalation option had a significant impact on escalation of commitment,participants who were under explicit condition had more escalation of commitment than who were under implicit condition.3.The Category Property of escalation option significantly influenced the escalation of commitment, participants who were under the typical partition of escalation option had more escalation of commitment than who were under atypical partition of escalation option.4.The effect of cognition needs in the partition priming of difference options is not consistent.Under the condition of alternative options partition priming,relative to the low cognition needs,high cognitive needs subjects had more escalation of commitment.But,Under the condition of escalation options partition priming, relative to the high cognition needs, lower cognition needs subjects had more escalation of commitment.