Staying the course: Decision makers who escalate commitment are trusted and trustworthy.

Escalation of commitment-the tendency to remain committed to a course of action, often despite negative prospects-is common. Why does it persist? Across three preregistered experiments ( = 3,888), we tested the hypothesis that escalating commitment signals trustworthiness. Experiments 1-2, respectively, revealed that decision makers who escalated commitment were perceived as more trustworthy and entrusted with 29% more money by third-party observers.

Confidence in Context: Perceived Accuracy of Quantitative Estimates Decreases With Repeated Trials.

Across seven studies (combined = 5,484), we demonstrated that confidence in one's judgments decreases over a series of quantitative estimates. This finding was robust to various methods of confidence elicitation, the presence of incentives, and different estimation topics (Studies 1, 2, and 4). Our results also stand in contrast to participant expectations (Study 3).