Sunk Cost Bias in Education (and Life)

I have enjoyed listening to the book Essentialism. The Disciplined Pursuit of Less By Greg McKeown over the last week. Many ideas have challenged my thinking, but one that I want to act on is a relatively well-known theory - The Sunk Cost Bias. 

The Sunk Cost Fallacy is explained on Freakonomics as;
 A “sunk cost” is just what it sounds like: time or money you’ve already spent. The sunk-cost fallacy is when you tell yourself that you can’t quit because of all that time or money you spent. We shouldn’t fall for this fallacy, but we do it all the time.

I found it remarkably easy to think of times I have falling to this fallacy. I guess like anything when you are aware of a problem you are halfway towards a solution, so I write this post to aide my awareness (and yours...);

1. Do you pay more to maintain technology than you would pay to purchase it if you did not own it? E.g. spending hundreds on technicians servicing computers that you would not purchase in their current condition for more than $50 if you did not own them. 

The hard thing about this is research has proven we value things we own more than things we do not own. So we may only be prepared to sell something we already own for $200 - but if we did not own it we may only be prepared to buy it for $100. 
Counter: Ask yourself how much money you would spend if you walked into a store to purchase the item before you commit to spending more on its 
maintenance. 

2. Do you spend money on a service or product because 'you know how to use it now' or you spent a long time setting it up? When a product or service is complicated to set up and learn I believe you are far less likely to move away from it - even if it is no longer meeting your needs. Any product in which individual accounts have been created for every student seems to stick around longer in schools than products with minimal user input - which seems completely counter-productive; but if you have invested time in setting something up you often want to 'reap the rewards' even when the ship has long since sailed.

This is the reason so many companies offer 'free trials'. They know that once you have invested your time into learning their system you are likely to use it.
Counter: Balance the time you will save with the superior product - and acknowledge that time spent on the old product served its purpose and probably provided you with transferable skills. Understand that ongoing commitments to services, ideas or products should depend on their continuing usefulness - not their past history.

3. Do you persist on using an idea you have spent lots of time with - even when it does not work effectively? I was once part of a group that spent alot of time with an external facilitator on an Inquiry Learner Model. The more time we spent with the facilitators model, the more we knew it did not met our needs; but the more time we spent the harder it was to let go of - after all we had invested so much time!
Counter: Chances are there will be takeaways from any learning - even if you ultimately do not fully subscribe to the ideas. Recognise that knowing what you do not want is just as important as knowing what you do want.

4. Do you use technology for no purpose - because you previously spent money on it and time to learn? I often wonder why teachers can fall into the Substitute trap (i.e.  SAMR model). Thinking of the Sunk Cost Bias it makes some sense, time and money has been invested in this new device - so it needs to be utilised now - even if it is not achieving anything beyond what pen and paper could.  A classic example is seeing calculators being utilised on devices - even though a set of class calculators has gathered dust on the shelf for years before the shiny new device was brought in!
Counter: Utilise the Sunk Cost Bias productively by having teachers spend some time learning something new; be it attending a conference in the school holidays or joining in a twitter chat. Know that by investing some time we will be more likely to invest further time - no one wants to invest something and see no rewards from it! 

5. Do you continue with a lesson/idea/project - even when the students have lost engagement? When you have spent hours over the holidays planning the most amazing learning for your students but the students do not share your enthusiasm....how easy do you find it to flag the concept, talk to your students about alternative ideas and forget about the late nights you spent researching ideas and developing resources? 
Counter: Don't spend hours planning something for others, thinking that your excitements means others will also be excited! And if you still find yourself in this situation, remember you cannot reclaim your time! 

Be proud to admit your mistakes - and have an honest conversation with your learners to show that you have a Growth Mindset.

This article on LifeHacker explores some way in your personal life that the Sunk Cost Fallacy may take over. 
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/how-the-sunk-cost-fallacy-makes-you-act-stupid.html