Your Thoughts Your Power Source

 

The sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias that occurs when we continue investing resources – be it time, money, energy, or emotions – into a situation or endeavour solely because we’ve already invested so much, even if the outcome is unfavourable or unlikely to improve.

In other words, we let our past investments dictate our future decisions, instead of objectively assessing the current circumstances.

Imagine you’re at a movie theatre, and you’ve paid for an expensive ticket to watch a film that turns out to be terrible.

Instead of leaving the theatre and enjoying the rest of your day, you might feel compelled to stay and endure the movie, thinking, “I’ve already paid for the ticket, so I should at least get my money’s worth.” This is a classic example of the sunk cost fallacy at play.