The sunk-cost bias describes the tendency to continue an inferior course of action because one has invested significant, irrecoverable resources in it in the past. It can lead individuals to make decisions that are suboptimal for their welfare. Across five experiments (N = 3197), we investigate whether the tendency of individuals to display sunk-cost bias is influenced by their sense of psychological connectedness to their past self that incurred the initial cost, or past-self-continuity. Studies 1–3 show evidence that individuals with low (versus high) past-self-continuity are less likely to display sunk-cost bias because they anticipate less negative feelings associated with abandoning substantial investments. Study 4, which was conducted under Registered Report format, provides partial support for this theory. We discuss potential complementary mechanisms, as well as implications of our findings for negative self-focused emotions and for decision biases routed in overweighting of or overcommitment to past actions.

沉没成本的偏差描述了继续采取劣质措施的趋势，因为过去人们已在其中投入了大量不可回收的资源。它可能会导致个人做出对他们的福利而言并非最佳的决策。横跨五个实验（N = 3197），我们调查了个人表现出沉没成本偏向的趋势是否受到他们对导致过去成本或过去自我连续性的过去自我的心理联系感的影响。研究1–3的证据表明，过去自我连续性较低（相对较高）的个人不太可能表现出沉没成本偏差，因为他们预期与放弃大量投资相关的负面情绪会减少。以注册报告格式进行的研究4为该理论提供了部分支持。我们讨论了潜在的补充机制，以及我们的发现对负面的自我关注情绪的影响，以及对过重或过分致力于过去行动的决策偏见。