Commitment and consistency
Once people have taken a stand or made a commitment, especially a public, active or effortful one, they feel pressure to behave in line with it. Small early commitments can therefore be used to steer later, larger ones.
What drives it
Consistency spares people the effort of rethinking and protects their image as reliable and rational. Being seen to change your mind costs face, so people defend past positions long after they have stopped making sense.
How it shows
Work
How it is used: getting a prospect to say yes to a small trial, sign a letter of intent or state their goals aloud, then holding them to it ('You said reducing churn was the priority'). Leaders announcing a strategy publicly so they cannot back out. How to spot it: being asked to agree to a principle in the abstract before the specifics; being asked to write something down or say it in front of others; the phrase 'you agreed earlier'. Escalation shows when a failing project keeps getting funded by the person who launched it.
Relationships
Someone who stays in a relationship partly because they told everyone it was 'the one'. Initiation rites and costly commitments in groups that make members defend the group harder afterwards.
Self
You feel bound by a position you took last week even though new information has come in, and you notice you are more motivated to justify it than to test it. 'I can't go back on it now' is the tell.
What tells it apart
Sunk cost fallacy: Sunk cost is about resources already spent; consistency is about statements or identities already declared. A person can walk away from money spent yet cling to a stance they announced.
Cognitive dissonance: Dissonance is the inner discomfort of inconsistency; the commitment principle is the outward pressure it creates, often deliberately engineered by someone else.
Self-verification: Self-verification seeks confirmation of a long-held self-view; commitment pressure can attach to a position taken only minutes ago.
A test
Ask 'knowing what I know now, would I make this commitment again today?'; if the honest answer is no but you feel you cannot change course, consistency pressure is in charge.
Questions to carry
- Knowing what is known now, which part of this commitment would be made again today?
- Where am I defending something I said publicly because changing my mind would cost me face?
How strong the research is
moderate. The drive to stay consistent with past commitments is well supported, especially for public, written and effortful commitments, but individual techniques based on it show modest effects that vary by context.
Where it comes from
Leon Festinger, 1957 (cognitive dissonance); Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser, 1966; Robert Cialdini, 1984 (Influence); Barry Staw, 1976 (escalation of commitment)
Sources
- Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (1984)