Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

by Annie Duke

When it comes to quitting, the most painful thing to quit is who you are. Our ideas, beliefs, and actions are part of our identity. When new information conflicts with a belief, we experience cognitive dissonance. To resolve the conflict, we can either change the belief or rationalize away the new information. Too often, we choose the latter. Dissonance can also result from new information coming into conflict with our past actions. We have a desire to maintain internal consistency, where our past beliefs and actions line up with our present beliefs and actions. We also want others to view us as consistent. We worry that if others see inconsistency between our present and past decisions, beliefs, or actions, they will judge us as being wrong, irrational, capricious, and prone to mistakes. When we know or believe our decisions are being evaluated by others, our intuition is that we will be more rational, but the opposite is true. External validity increases escalation of commitment. The more extreme a position is, the more cognitive gymnastics we’ll do to defend it. The facts are more likely to persuade you away from the consensus opinion than a fringe view.