Decision makers treat self-imposed cost ceilings as absolute prohibitions rather than renegotiable limits

Evidence

For example, when President Johnson “began to search for the elusive point at which the costs of Vietnam would become unacceptable to the American people, he always settled upon mobilization, the point at which reserves would have to be called up to support a war that was becoming increasingly distasteful to the American public” (Schandler, 1977, p. 56). Although Johnson’s view may have been correct, he neither sought a way around the ceiling nor considered whether a shorter war with mobilization might have been more acceptable than a longer and inconclusive one fought with fewer men. Instead, the ceiling was taken as an absolute prohibition. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2569

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to prospect theory, anchoring, and the Vietnam decision research of Janis & Mann’s groupthink work.