A common cognitive bias gets a name, definition

Imagine you decide to walk to the park. As you head out the front door, you take a left and walk for about a block. At that point, you realize it would’ve been a faster journey if you would’ve taken a right turn when you’d left your house. Though you’re still close enough to head back to your front door and go on the faster route, would you turn back? 

No, according to a new study published in Psychological Science. The paper calls this common phenomenon the doubling-back aversion—defined as the tendency for an individual to forego taking an easier or faster route when it involves retracing steps they’ve already taken on an alternate route. This propensity can apply to both physical and cognitive tasks.

Though the researchers describe this as the first study of its kind, they referenced studies of different cognitive biases, like the sunk-cost bias, when designing their study (Arkes & Blumer, 1985; Brockner, 1992; Feldman & Wong, 2018; Kazinka et al., 2021; Molden & Hui, 2011; Thaler, 1980). That’s because these decision-making patterns are somewhat in the same “family,” said lead author Kristine Cho of the University of California, Berkeley.

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“I think all of these talk about how people make what could be construed as poor decisions,” Cho said.

From this baseline, the researchers began to theorize what aspects might contribute to an individual’s decision to double back. They narrowed in on two distinct facets. First is the feeling that doubling back would erase one’s initial progress. Second is the feeling that doubling back would entail a heavier workload than sticking with the same path, as you’re “restarting” on the path to your end goal.

After defining these facets, the researchers designed and conducted four separate experiments, spanning a total of 2,524 participants. They included undergraduate students at UC Berkeley and people recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The researchers incorporated tests to measure a person’s doubling-back aversion in both physical and cognitive realms. In some tests, the researchers used virtual reality to have participants walk a physical path and then double back. In others, they had participants generate a list of words beginning with the same letter, and then switch to a different, easier letter after they began the task. 

In Tests 1 and 2, they tested whether the participants exhibited doubling-back aversion at all. In Tests 3 and 4, the researchers manipulated the tests to determine which of the two predetermined facets of these decisions might contribute more to an individual’s hesitation: concern over loss of progress or concern over the workload that restarting entails.

Across all four tests, participants demonstrated doubling-back aversion. Both the fear of losing work already begun and the dread of adding more work to their plate contributed to their likelihood of avoiding a switch to an easier route. These findings weren’t surprising to the research team, but their magnitude was, Cho said.

For example, when the researchers began analyzing the results of Test 2, they found that participants in the control condition, who were presented with changing a task without framing that choice as doubling back, 75% of participants wanted to switch to the easier task. But in the condition where the researchers framed the decision as doubling back, only 25% of people switched to the easier task. 

“When I was analyzing these results, I was like, ‘Oh, is there a mistake? How can there be such a big difference?’” Cho said. It’s not clear at this point why taking a few steps back on a path might prevent humans from taking a more efficient route to their goals.

The research team called for further testing to extrapolate the reasons behind the bias and to determine how common this phenomenon is across a broader population. But recognizing this pattern could be the first step in helping people make better decisions overall, Cho said.

“I do think that these findings, in a grandiose, hopeful sense, can help people make better decisions,” Cho said, adding, “sometimes the best way to move forward is taking one step backward, and that’s hard for me to admit. According to the studies, it’s hard for a lot of people to admit.” 

References

Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985). The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35(1), 124–140.

Brockner, J. (1992). The escalation of commitment to a failing course of action: Toward theoretical progress. Academy of Management Review, 17(1), 39–61.

Cho, K. Y., & Critcher, C. R. (2025). Doubling-back aversion: A reluctance to make progress by undoing it. Psychological Science, 36(5), 332-349.

Feldman, G., & Wong, K. F. E. (2018). When action–inaction framing leads to higher escalation of commitment: A new inaction-effect perspective on the sunk-cost fallacy. Psychological Science, 29(4), 537–548.

Kazinka, R., MacDonald, A. W., & Redish, A. D. (2021). Sensitivity to sunk costs depends on attention to the delay. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.

Molden, D. C., & Hui, C. M. (2011). Promoting de-escalation of commitment: A regulatory-focus perspective on sunk costs. Psychological Science, 22, 8–12.

Thaler, R. (1980). Toward a positive theory of consumer choice. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1(1), 39–60.