Listen to part of a lecture from a psychology class.
(male professor) So, I have a personal example. Some years back, my wife and I were looking for a house to buy. We found this great old house out in the country. But my wife had her doubts about it. She noticed the house wasn't in very good condition. It was a little run down and probably needed some repairs. But, I really fell in love with the architecture of the house, the unusual way it was designed and built, so I convinced my wife that we could hire people to fix it up and, you know, make the house nice.We decided to buy it and live there after the repairs were finished. Well, the workers we hired to repair the house soon discovered things were worse than I thought. It turned out that the roof was damaged and needed expensive repairs. After the roof was repaired, the workers discovered the house had electrical problems. Most of the wiring was bad and would have to be replaced, at a huge cost.Well, at this point,my wife reminded me of her earlier doubts about the house and wondered if we could ever get it in good shape. But I just became more determined than ever. I paid for all the wiring to be replaced by an electrician. But it gets worse. The electrician noticed that insects had eaten some of the walls and they would also have to be torn out and replaced. This was going to be more expensive than all the other repairs. But by this point, I felt determined to keep going. I kept thinking, “I have to do it. If I stopped now, my wife will think I was wrong for not following her advice.”
Explain how the example from the professor’s lecture illustrates irrational comment.
The phenomenon that people tend to increase their devotion into something that is likely to fail is called irrational commitment. In the lecture, the professor takes his own experience of a house purchase. Several years ago, he and his wife found an old house when they were looking for a new place to live in. And the professor was immediately attracted to it even though his wife thought it was too torn. However, when they bought the house, they realized the situation was actually worse than they had thought. The roof needed expensive repairing, and most of the electrical wires needed replacement, which was also very expensive. After that they found out the wall needed replacement because of the insects inside them, and his wife brought up her earlier doubts about the repair, but the professor couldn't help keeping investing in the repair project because of his irrational commitment to the project, which intensified his determination when he feared to be judged by his wife. (125 words)
