Further Reading: The Sunk Cost of Consensus

Essential

Tavris, C. & Aronson, E. (2007/2015). Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The best treatment of how self-justification and cognitive dissonance maintain commitment to wrong positions — at both individual and institutional levels. Directly relevant to the identity component of switching cost. (Tier 1)

Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press. The foundational work on cognitive dissonance. Festinger's insight — that the more invested you are in a belief, the more you resist disconfirming evidence — is the psychological engine of institutional sunk cost. (Tier 1)

The Lobotomy Case

El-Hai, J. (2005). The Lobotomist. Wiley. The definitive biography of Walter Freeman. Documents the personal sunk cost that drove Freeman to continue lobotomizing patients long after the evidence turned. Disturbing and essential. (Tier 1)

Valenstein, E. S. (1986). Great and Desperate Cures. Basic Books. A broader history of radical treatments for mental illness, including lobotomy, insulin shock therapy, and other interventions that were adopted and abandoned. Shows the recurring pattern of sunk cost in psychiatric treatment history. (Tier 1)

The Dietary Fat Case

Taubes, G. (2007). Good Calories, Bad Calories. Knopf. The most detailed account of the dietary fat consensus, its evidence base, and its institutional maintenance. Sometimes overstates the case but indispensable for understanding the sunk cost dynamics. (Tier 1)

Institutional Change

Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press. Kuhn's account of paradigm shifts is, in part, an account of sunk cost dynamics — fields resist change because the existing paradigm represents an enormous investment. His famous claim that paradigm shifts require generational turnover is essentially a sunk cost argument. (Tier 1)

North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press. An economist's analysis of why institutions resist change. North's concept of "path dependence" in institutional evolution is directly relevant to the sunk cost of consensus. (Tier 1)

For Instructors

The lobotomy case is a powerful teaching tool but requires sensitivity. Students may have family members affected by psychiatric treatment. Frame the discussion around structural forces rather than individual blame, and connect the historical case to present-day dynamics to prevent the "that could never happen today" dismissal.