Withdrawal costs rise in step with the urge to stop, trapping the actor

Evidence

Sequential actions seems to possess the same quality. The degree to which the actor finds himself bound to perpetuate the action, and opting-out difficult, tends to grow with every stage. First steps are easy and require little, if any, moral torments. The steps to follow are increasingly daunting. Finally, taking them feels unbearable. Yet the cost of withdrawal has also grown by that time. Thus the urge to break off is weak when the obstacles to withdrawal are also weak or non-existent. When the urge intensifies, the obstacles it encounters are at every stage strong enough to balance it. When the actor is overwhelmed with the desire to back out, it is normally too late for him to do so. Milgram listed sequential action among the main ‘binding factors’ (i.e. factors locking the subject in his situation). It is tempting to ascribe the strength of this particular binding factor to the determining impact of the subject’s own past actions. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 448

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘sequential action’ as a binding factor, and the swamp metaphor renders the trap’s escalation vividly.