You may be wondering what is the "sunk cost" bias. For those unaware, the "sunk cost" bias is a person's reluctance to abandon a project in which they have invested a lot of money and effort, despite the fact that such a project has been shown to be unfeasible.
A recent study has concluded that only 15 minutes of mindfulness meditation they can help people eliminate this type of bias. The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, examined the effects of meditation on that particular type of mental bias (Hafenbrack et al., 2013).
Before explaining in more detail the conclusions of this research, I leave you a video in which they treat a little more in depth on this subject of Mindfulness:
The "sunk cost" bias can be a big problem for individuals, businesses, and even governments. In fact, this bias is also known as «concord effect« It refers to the joint project developed by France and Great Britain, which consisted of manufacturing a super plane that cost 6 times more than expected. Even when the project was found to be unviable, money (and effort) continued to be spent simply because a significant investment had already been made.
The effects of the "sunk cost" bias can be seen in public projects that cost much more than budgeted.
Think clearly
"World peace will be achieved when enough people have inner peace to build it." - Peace Pilgrim
One of the strengths of meditation is that focus the mind on the present moment.
The researchers created a business scenario that was designed to test for sunk cost bias. They did two groups: one group received a mindfulness meditation session for 15 minutes and the other control group received nothing. In the control group 40% of the people were able to resist the sunk bias. However, almost 80% of those who did this type of meditation were able to resist this bias.
The researchers got similar results in another experiment and then went on to examine exactly how mindfulness is helpful. In a third experiment they found that mindfulness increases concentration in the present moment, as it should be.
A focus on the present reduces the negative feelings associated with the "sunk cost" bias - that helplessness of feeling like a lot of time, money and effort is going to waste. This reduction in negative emotion meant that participants were much better equipped to resist bias.
The negativity bias
This finding was based on previous research that found that meditation can also help people combat the "negativity bias": the natural tendency of people to focus too much on negative information.
If this type of improvement can be seen with just 15 minutes of meditation, imagine how much you can improve thinking and decision making with constant meditation practice.