Irrational escalation — The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong. Also known as the sunk cost fallacy.

Often we are faced with situations where our intuition misguides us. Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Many of these biases affect belief formation, business and economic decisions, and human behavior in general.