Escalation Of Commitment / 非理性投入升级

Escalation of commitment is the pattern where parties continue investing in a losing course because stopping would make prior losses undeniable. In 106.别再害怕冲突，快来学习谈判术！, the 100-dollar auction game illustrates the trap: the second-highest bidder pays but receives nothing, so bidders keep raising even after the price exceeds the prize.

The episode applies the same mechanism to business disputes, lawsuits, price wars, state conflicts, and the [[NationalHockeyLeague|NHL]] labor shutdown. Its practical lesson is to design exit mechanisms before escalation begins, such as making the cost of delay visible and automatic.

Key Claims

• Escalation often starts from the wish not to be the loser of an earlier investment.
• Prior investment should not determine the current BATNA / Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement or Reservation Value / 谈判底线.
• Clear exit mechanisms can convert vague future loss into a visible present cost.
• Escalation can combine with Zero-Sum Bias / 零和偏误 when each side treats stopping as surrender.

Connections

• Opportunity Cost and Cost-Benefit Thinking - adjacent decision disciplines that make continued loss visible.
• National Hockey League / NHL and NHL Players’ Association / NHLPA - source case.
• Framing Effect / 表述框架效应 and Motivated Bias / 动机偏差 - related bias concepts.
• Negotiation As Bargaining / 谈判即商量 - broader method that tries to keep conflict calculable.