Like Mother, Like Daughter

You would never tell from this picture, but my mother and I aren’t exactly best friends. I call my dad almost every day just to say “hi” when I’m walking to class, but generally the only time my mother hears the sound of my voice on the phone is if she happens to answer my dad’s cell for him – which I’m convinced she does simply because we would never talk at all if she didn’t.

Fortunately, our lack of communication is also positively correlated with our lack of arguments. Starting from the time I could talk and continuing up to this very day my mother have been having verbal battles of epic proportions. It goes without saying, however, that our worst fights took place when I was in high school – my angsty teenager phase.

Our arguments were the perfect example of conflict spirals. Conflict spirals are disagreements or quarrels that begin with one person (or party) irritating a second person, who responds in a similar irritating way, which causes the first person to take additional action, and on and on and on (Brett et al., 1998; Rubin at al., 1994). Interestingly, there are several different things that can cause conflicts to escalate in such a way. In the case of my mother and I, however, the spirals were most certainly due to only one thing: sunk costs.

Sunk costs – also referred to as entrapment and escalation effect – is when parties in conflict attempt to justify their past investments by increasing their commitment to a cause, which is usually a failing one (Karlsson et al., 2005, Staw, 1997; Tan & Yates, 2002; Wong et al., 2006).

I’d like to be able to tell you specifically what at least one of our fights was about, but they escalated to such a high degree that I honestly could never remember what a single one of them was about. All I know is that they would start at something completely trivial and end with screaming to the point of voice loss and someone driving off for several hours. I can certainly imagine how one of them went though.

I would walk into the kitchen where she was cooking a delicious dinner – despite our differences there’s still no denying that she is a stellar chef – and she would remind me to finish a worksheet that I had mentioned I had for homework. I would be irritated from a long and get offended easily and say, “Mother how long have I been a straight A student? HOW many times have I EVER needed you to remind me to do my homework?! NEVER!” She would be upset by my disrespect and respond with even more anger saying, “How dare you talk to me in such a way! I’m just trying to look out for you and take an interest in your life! HERE I AM SLAVING OVER A MEAL AND YOU CAN’T EVEN HELP SET THE TABLE! YOU’RE SO UNGRATEFUL!”

I wouldn’t even care about her telling me to do my homework any longer but I wouldn’t want to back down and admit that I was out of line, so I would get even MORE upset, go to the cabinet, and start slamming down plates on the table, all the while yelling, “HERE! I’LL JUST DO EVERYTHING! I’LL SET THE TABLE, DO THE LAUNDRY, MAKE GOOD GRADES SO THAT YOOOOOUUUU’LL LOOK LIKE A GOOD MOTHER! Jonathan [my brother] NEVER has to do ANYTHING around the house! I HATE YOU!”

Similarly, my mother would likely want to save face as well and would throw down her spoon and launch into a triad about something completely unrelated like how she works so hard and doesn’t deserve to be treated like dirt in her own home by her own daughter. I’d storm out of the room, then storm back in, slamming doors all along the way. We would scream more and more, neither of us wanting to give up and admit that all of it was for nothing.

Thankfully, my dad – the referee, the peacemaker – would always make me apologize, but you see just how easy it is to get caught in a conflict spiral due to sunk costs. If we both had stopped pouring more and more anger into our fight in an attempt to justify all of the anger before it sooner, things never would have reached such a point.


*As a side note, I really do love my mom dearly and respect her more than any other woman on the planet. According to my dad, we fight the way we do because we’re really so much alike. He’s probably right.
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Brett, J. M., Shapiro, D. L., & Lytle, A. L. (1998). Breaking the bonds of reciprocity in negotiations. Academy of Management Journal, 41, 410-424.

Karlsson, N., Juliusson, E., & Gärling, T. (2005). A conceptualisation of task dimensions affecting escalation of commitment. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 17, 835-858.

Rubin, J.Z., Pruitt, D. G., & Kim, S. H. (1994). Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Staw, B. (1997). The escalation of commitment: An update and appraisal. Organizational decision making (pp. 191-215). New York, NY US: Cambridge University Press.

Tan, H., & Yates, J. (2002). Financial budgets and escalation effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 87, 300-322.

Wong, K., Yik, M., & Kwong, J. (2006). Understanding the emotional aspects of escalation of commitment: The role of negative affect. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91, 282-297.