Range

the sunk cost mindset is so deeply entrenched that conmen know to begin by asking their marks for several small favors or investments before progressing to large asks. Once a mark has invested energy or money, rather than walking away from sunk costs he will continue investing, more than he ever wanted to, even as, to any rational observer, disaster becomes imminent. “The more we have invested and even lost,” Konnikova wrote, “the longer we will persist in insisting it will all work out.”