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Abstract

Devil's advocacy is designed to assist decision makers in questioning assumptions. Escalating commitment in organizations occurs in decisions involving ambiguous information which requires decision makers to make assumptions. In such decisions, experts often provide analysis and recommendations for action which may increase the tendency toward escalating commitment if decision makers uncritically accept the assumptions underlying the experts' recommendations. Devil's advocacy may be effective in this process. In this paper, Staw's (1976) escalating commitment task is used to examine the effects of an expert report and a devil's advocate treatment on the tendency to escalate commitment. Results show that an expert report increases dollar allocations to a failing project and subjects' estimates of the project's probability of success. A devil's advocate critique appeared to reduce the effects of the expert report though the results were only marginally significant. The results also suggest that, in their assessments of probability of success, females are less sensitive than males to the failure feedback but more sensitive to the devil's advocate treatment.

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Effects of Devil's Advocacy on Escalating Commitment

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