Iraq and the Danger of Psychological Entrapment

Plous's point is not that Bush's appeal is ineffective; the point of entrapment is that it is exceedingly effective. It is utterly human not to want a great sacrifice to go in vain.

I asked Plous whether he was drawing his conclusion only because the war in Iraq is going badly. Would he have told the British the same thing, for example, during the bleakest days of 1940, when a German victory seemed imminent -- and when holding on led to victory over Adolf Hitler?

In other words, how do you tell the difference between getting entrapped in a disaster and being persistent through the difficult phase that can precede victory?

Psychology cannot predict the future or tell you what to do, but Plous said it can warn you to be vigilant if a course of action is primarily justified in terms of recovering what has already been lost. It is not wrong to factor in sunk costs, but they should not drive the decision.

In the World War II example, defeating fascism, not honoring dead British soldiers, was the reason it made sense to fight on.

"Rational decision-making should not be driven primarily by recovery of past costs," Plous said. "If you can no longer justify it in terms of what it will bring in the future and what its realistic prospects are, that is a warning sign you may have become entrapped."

Other techniques to avoid entrapment in everyday life include making sure that a decision to continue on a path is not made solely by people who decided on that path in the first place, by setting limits on investments upfront and by triggering automatic reviews if a plan of action hits certain predetermined failure points.

But none of those measures can take the sting out of the dilemma on whether to change course after a substantial investment: "Regardless of whether you supported the war or not," Plous said, "this is going to be heart-wrenching."