Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 5/5 debate potential 1/5

Duke: Research shows people escalate commitment when outcomes deteriorate

Annie Duke · 20VC: Annie Duke on Reversible vs Irreversible Decisions, How To Evaluate Risk, The Theory of Sunk Cost in Venture & How to Optimise Both the Discussion and Quality of Investment Decisions · Jan 11, 2021 · at 23:29

Annie Duke references behavioral science research on decision-making biases when evaluating failing investments.

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“There's really amazing work, some from Katie Milkman and Maurice Schweitzer, which shows this escalation of commitment, that when things are going poorly, we actually escalate our commitment.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Academic research by Katie Milkman and Maurice Schweitzer shows that people escalate their commitment to projects when things are going poorly.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim is partially true. Katie Milkman co-authored published academic research demonstrating escalation of commitment (Beshears & Milkman, 2011, 'Do Sell-Side Stock Analysts Exhibit Escalation of Commitment?'). However, Maurice Schweitzer was not a co-author on that research. Furthermore, the joint paper co-authored by both Milkman and Schweitzer (Dai et al., 2018, 'Quitting When the Going Gets Tough') documented the opposite phenomenon: people quitting or reducing persistence when experiencing early setbacks under high performance expectations.

Beshears, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2011) demonstrated escalation of commitment in sell-side stock analysts following incorrect forecasts.
Dai, H., Dietvorst, B. J., Tuckfield, B., Milkman, K. L., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2018) found that early setbacks lead to quitting and reduced effort rather than escalation of commitment.
Maurice Schweitzer has no published academic research demonstrating escalation of commitment.

Checked against

[1] aom.org [2] bookdown.org [3] upenn.edu [4] nih.gov [5] stanford.edu [6] katymilkman.com [7] wikipedia.org [8] squarespace.com

assessed as of 2026-07-23

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

escalation of commitment Katie Milkman Maurice Schweitzer

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