Picture this: You’re driving to an important appointment when you suddenly realize you’ve missed a turn. There’s a shortcut back the way you came that would get you there faster—if you’re willing to turn around and retrace your route. Logically, the smart move is to go back and take the shortcut. But something inside you balks at the idea. It feels wrong to reverse direction, so you keep going forward on the longer path, even though it’s clearly less efficient. Sound familiar? Most of us have felt this subtle resistance to backtracking in one situation or another. As it turns out, that gut feeling has a name: psychologists call it “doubling-back aversion.” According to new research, this previously unidentified but widespread bias is a reluctance to pursue a better route to a goal if it involves undoing progress we’ve already made . In simple terms, we hate to lose our progress, even when backtracking would ultimately save us time and effort.
In the pages that follow, we’ll explore this quirky mental roadblock and why our brains sometimes trick us into sticking with a suboptimal path. We’ll start with what doubling-back aversion is and how researchers discovered it. Then we’ll dig into why it happens – the psychology behind our aversion to undoing work – and how it differs from more familiar decision-making traps like the sunk cost fallacy. Along the way, we’ll look at real-world examples (big and small) where this bias comes into play, and examine evidence from recent studies that shine a light on just how powerful it can be. Finally, we’ll discuss what these findings mean for our daily lives and how recognizing this tendency might help us make smarter, more flexible decisions when progress requires a step back.
What Is Doubling-Back Aversion?
Doubling-back aversion is a newly recognized cognitive bias that causes people to avoid switching to a more efficient solution if doing so means undoing or retracing some of their previous progress . In other words, once we’ve started down a path, we become oddly averse to backtracking – even when backtracking would clearly help us reach our goal faster or easier. This phenomenon was identified in 2025 by researchers Kristine Y. Cho and Clayton R. Critcher of UC Berkeley, after they noticed how often people persist in less-efficient strategies simply because the better option involves losing a bit of ground .
At its core, doubling-back aversion is about the psychological discomfort of reversing course. We tend to feel uneasy about erasing visible progress we’ve made toward a goal . The idea of nullifying work already done – no matter how trivial that work might be – makes us reluctant to change direction. As a result, we often choose persistence over progress, sticking to a path we know is longer or harder rather than endure the feeling of “wasted” effort that comes with backtracking .
It’s important to note that doubling-back aversion is distinct from other decision-making biases that might sound similar. For example, the well-known sunk-cost fallacy can also cause people to continue with a losing or inefficient course of action, but for a different reason. Sunk-cost thinking hinges on resources already invested (time, money, etc.) – “I’ve spent so much on this, I can’t quit now.” Doubling-back aversion, on the other hand, can occur even when the past investment is minimal or none at all, simply because undoing any amount of progress feels wrong . It’s not about protecting a prior investment; it’s about avoiding the emotional sting of seeing progress wiped away. Likewise, this phenomenon is more specific than the general status quo bias, which is a broad preference for keeping things as they are. With doubling-back aversion, the resistance isn’t just about change in general – it’s specifically about not wanting to reverse direction on a journey or task because of how that reversal is mentally framed .
In everyday terms, doubling-back aversion is that little voice protesting “But I’ve come this far…” when you consider turning around – even if turning around is the smarter choice. It’s the feeling that stopping now would render your earlier efforts worthless, leading you to push ahead down an inefficient road just so those efforts “count for something.” This bias can be surprisingly powerful, often overruling our logical assessment of what’s best.
New Research Uncovers a Hidden Bias
Until recently, this reluctance to double back was underappreciated in psychology. To test just how real and widespread it is, Cho and Critcher conducted a series of four experiments with over 2,500 adults in the U.S. . Their findings, published in Psychological Science in 2025, confirmed that doubling-back aversion is both real and remarkably common . People consistently shunned more efficient paths to a goal if those paths involved undoing some progress they had already made. Crucially, this held true across different scenarios – whether physically navigating a route or tackling a mental task – indicating that the bias isn’t limited to one domain .
One experiment put participants in a virtual reality maze. They walked toward a destination, then discovered a sign offering a shortcut that required turning back along the route they’d come. Rationally, most should take the shortcut (it was clearly faster). But the results told a different story: when the shorter path meant retracing their steps, only about 31% of participants chose it. In contrast, nearly 57% took a comparably shorter path when it didn’t require backtracking . In other words, the simple fact that one route felt like going backwards caused people to reject an otherwise identical time-saving option.
Another experiment involved a word puzzle. Participants had to list 40 words beginning with the letter “G.” Partway through, they were given a chance to switch to a much easier task: listing words starting with “T” (since English has far more “T” words). The catch was in how this switch was described. When it was framed as “continuing with the remaining 75% of the task” (just under new instructions), a strong majority (75% of participants) eagerly switched to the easier “T” words. But when the exact same choice was framed as “throwing out the work you’ve done and starting over with a new task,” most people balked – only 25% chose to switch in that scenario . Simply calling the change a “restart” instead of a “continuation” caused a dramatic drop in willingness to take the better option . The difference was so stark that the researchers themselves were astonished – they initially wondered if there had been a mistake in their data coding, only to confirm the effect was real and “strikingly strong.”
Across all four studies, the pattern was the same: many people chose a longer or harder path over a shorter or easier one if the better path involved undoing prior progress . Importantly, this aversion was not due to ignorance or poor judgment about the outcomes. Participants understood perfectly well which option was faster or more efficient . In fact, researchers took care to make the advantages clear, and participants could accurately estimate that the “backtrack” option would save time. Yet, even with this knowledge, a sizable number still could not bring themselves to reverse course. Something deeper than logic was guiding their choices.
Why Do We Avoid Undoing Progress?
If people know that backtracking would save time or effort, why do they still avoid it? The short answer: emotion trumps logic in these moments. The studies revealed that doubling-back aversion is driven by how we mentally interpret our past and future efforts, rather than any actual change in the total work required . Essentially, the idea of backtracking changes how we feel about the situation, even if the objective facts (like total distance or time) remain in our favor.
Researchers broke this psychological effect into two key components that together make backtracking feel so unappealing :
- The deletion of progress already made. Undoing work we’ve done makes us feel like we’ve wasted that effort. It’s painful to see progress erased. In the word task example, telling people they’d be “throwing out the work you have done so far” triggered this feeling – their first 10 words would count for nothing . Likewise, in a travel scenario, flying back to your starting point means the miles you traveled initially were essentially for naught. This sense of waste creates a strong emotional loss aversion to doubling back . We don’t want to feel that our past effort was pointless.
- The idea of a “new” or expanded task ahead. Backtracking also alters our perception of what remains to be done. If we have to go back, suddenly the finish line appears farther away – as if we’ve reset the clock on our journey. In experiments, when switching was framed as starting an entirely new task (e.g. “now do 30 T-words from scratch”), people felt they had more work left than if it was framed as just finishing the remainder of the same task . Psychologically, backtracking makes the future effort loom larger and feel more daunting . It’s as though by taking a step back, we trick ourselves into thinking we’ve added work (even if the total work is actually less). This component is about the framing of what’s ahead: are we continuing something, or starting over?
Both of these factors – the pain of lost progress and the intimidation of a “reset” – independently contribute to doubling-back aversion . When combined, they pack a one-two punch that can easily overpower our rational side. We might logically know that turning around is the quickest path to success, but subjectively it feels like we’ve undermined ourselves and made our road tougher. As the researchers put it, people see backtracking as “contaminating” the work they’ve done and mentally “resetting” their journey, which makes them feel down about both the wasted past effort and the work left to do . This emotional interpretation leads us to avoid the scenario that causes it .
Notably, doubling-back aversion kicked in even when there was no real cost to the initial progress being erased . In one study, participants walking a virtual path had only invested a minute or two before a shortcut appeared . Objectively, they hadn’t “lost” much by possibly turning around. Yet most still refused to erase even that trivial progress and instead slogged on ahead . This shows how perception of effort can outweigh reality. It wasn’t about the time or resources lost – it was the principle of the thing, the feeling of moving backward.
In short, we avoid undoing progress because it hurts our pride and motivation in subtle ways. It makes us feel like we’ve wasted time (which we strongly dislike) and it makes the road ahead seem longer (which saps our enthusiasm). Those feelings can be so aversive that we’ll accept a objectively worse outcome – spending more time or effort – just to avoid them . It’s a fascinating example of how our brains aren’t always the perfectly rational optimizers we might hope; they’re also the guardians of our subjective sense of progress.
Doubling-Back vs. Sunk Costs and Other Biases
You may be thinking that this sounds a bit like the sunk-cost fallacy, where people continue investing in a losing endeavor because they don’t want to “waste” the money or effort already spent. There is indeed a family resemblance, but doubling-back aversion is not quite the same thing – and understanding the distinction can clarify why this newly identified bias is noteworthy.
In the sunk-cost fallacy, the classic example is staying to watch a terrible movie just because you already paid for the ticket, or pouring more money into a failing project because you’ve already invested a lot. The key driver there is honoring past investments – we don’t want them to be in vain, so we keep going (even if we’d be better off cutting our losses). Doubling-back aversion, by contrast, can emerge even absent a significant past investment . It’s less about the cost already paid and more about an aversion to the act of undoing what’s been done. In fact, Cho and Critcher note that doubling-back aversion can arise without any meaningful sunk cost at all – sometimes all it takes is the perception of erasing effort, not actual loss of resources . For instance, in the virtual path study, participants hadn’t spent anything or lost anything tangible by turning around, yet the aversion still kicked in strongly .
Another difference is in the outcome focus. Sunk-cost fallacy can lead you to persist in something that perhaps should be abandoned altogether (like finishing a boring book just because you’re halfway through). Doubling-back aversion, however, isn’t necessarily about whether you’ll finish the goal, but how you go about it . In one analysis, researchers explained that with sunk costs, the question is often to complete or not to complete a goal (e.g., do I give up on this concert after losing the ticket?). With doubling-back aversion, the goal itself is still pursued, but the question is whether we discourage ourselves from achieving it in the most efficient way . In essence, doubling-back aversion might not stop you from reaching the summit, but it might cause you to take the long, hard trail instead of the easy shortcut.
Doubling-back aversion is also distinct from status quo bias, which is our general tendency to prefer keeping things the same or choosing the default option. Status quo bias can explain why people resist change broadly, but it doesn’t specifically capture the unique reluctance to reverse direction that doubling-back aversion describes. In fact, researchers argue that doubling-back aversion represents a specific kind of irrational resistance that arises “not from fear of change but from how progress is mentally represented.” We might have no problem changing to a new path if it starts from where we currently are, but we resist if the change requires temporarily going backward. It’s a subtle but meaningful distinction: doubling-back aversion is about the trajectory of progress (forward vs backward), not just sticking with what’s familiar.
To sum up, while it shares the theme of avoiding perceived waste with sunk costs, doubling-back aversion is a unique bias identified by researchers that zeroes in on the act of undoing progress as a trigger for irrational decision-making . It highlights a previously under-recognized reason why we sometimes reject perfectly good options: not because they’re worse (we know they’re better!), not because we’ve invested heavily (we might not have), but simply because we can’t stand the idea of backtracking on a journey.
Everyday Examples of Doubling-Back Aversion
This phenomenon isn’t just confined to psychology labs or hypothetical driving scenarios – it pervades everyday life in ways you might not have labeled until now. Once you know about doubling-back aversion, you may start to notice its fingerprint on many decisions, big and small. Here are some real-world situations where this aversion commonly surfaces :
- Staying in an unfulfilling situation – whether it’s a toxic friendship or a project going nowhere – because walking away would mean all the time and effort you’ve already invested would feel “for nothing.” You keep at it, telling yourself maybe it will pay off, when in truth you’re just avoiding the pain of admitting those past efforts won’t get a return .
- Sticking with a cumbersome process or tool that isn’t working for you (like a complicated productivity app or an inefficient method) simply because you’ve already put in effort setting it up or learning it. You hesitate to switch to a better system, because that would mean abandoning the work you put into the old one – even if the new approach would make life easier going forward .
- Following through on a bad route or plan out of stubbornness. Perhaps you realize midway that you took a wrong turn or chose a less optimal plan, yet you refuse to turn back. Many of us have persisted on a longer driving route rather than make a U-turn, or continued with a flawed plan because it felt too late to backtrack. We rationalize our choice as “making the best of it,” but often it’s doubling-back aversion whispering don’t undo what you’ve done .
- Remaining on a career or academic path that isn’t right for you, because switching fields or starting over in a new direction would mean sacrificing the progress you’ve made so far. For example, someone might stick with a career they find unsatisfying because they’ve already climbed partway up that ladder, even if they suspect they’d be happier (and eventually more successful) if they pivoted to a field better suited to their passions .
- Avoiding learning new skills or approaches because it might require you to set aside or “unlearn” what you currently know. In fast-changing fields, for instance, professionals sometimes resist adopting a new tool or technique because it feels like starting from scratch, wiping out the comfort and competence they built with the old ways. They end up clinging to outdated methods that keep them less efficient, all to avoid the temporary step back of being a beginner again .
Chances are, you can think of personal examples that fit one of the above. This bias can influence decisions at all scales. It might be as minor as not wanting to re-cook a dish from scratch even after a recipe mistake, or as consequential as a company hesitating to overhaul a project strategy that isn’t working because they’ve already invested months of work. In fact, in fields like project management, software development, and strategic planning, experts have observed that teams often resist abandoning a partially completed plan for a better one due to the “weight” of progress already made . Understanding doubling-back aversion gives a name to this all-too-common hesitation.
Recognizing and Overcoming the Bias
Knowing about doubling-back aversion is not just a matter of labeling our quirks—it can also be empowering. Simply being aware that our minds have this tendency is a crucial first step. The next time you catch yourself resisting a course correction, pause and ask: “Am I avoiding this option just because it feels like erasing what I’ve done so far?” If the answer is yes, consider reframing the situation. Remind yourself what you gain by switching to the better path, rather than what you lose by abandoning the old one.
In fact, the researchers behind this study suggest that reframing the decision in terms of future benefits instead of past losses could help break the spell of doubling-back aversion . For example, instead of thinking “If I change course now, all my prior work will be wasted,” try to focus on “If I change course now, I’ll save time and end up in a better position moving forward.” By shifting your mental emphasis to the positive outcomes ahead, you reduce the emotional sting of the lost effort. In the word-task experiment, simply phrasing the choice as continuing the task (with a new letter) rather than starting over made three times as many people willing to switch to the efficient strategy . That’s a powerful testament to the importance of framing. Likewise, if you find yourself in a real-life dilemma (say, considering quitting a project or changing jobs), focus on the fact that the sooner you make the switch, the more of your future you can save. Any past effort that isn’t leading you where you want to go is sunk either way; what matters is not doubling down on a suboptimal path and wasting even more time.
It’s also helpful to normalize the idea that sometimes the fastest way forward is actually to go back. We live in a culture that often equates progress with always moving forward, so stepping backward can feel like failure. But as this research reminds us, that’s not true – a well-timed step back can prevent far greater losses down the line . Think of it like hiking: if you’re on the wrong trail, each step forward is actually taking you further from your destination. Turning around isn’t failure; it’s course correction. In many cases, real progress means having the flexibility to pivot or backtrack when new information shows there’s a better way.
Finally, consider adopting a mindset that views effort as a learning experience rather than a scoreboard of progress. If you have to undo some work, it doesn’t mean that work was pointless – it got you to the point of insight where you can make a better choice. In other words, no effort is truly “wasted” if it leads to a smarter strategy. By valuing what you learned or the fact that you’re now on the optimal path, you can mentally recycle that past effort, so it feels less like an outright loss.
Takeaways
The discovery of doubling-back aversion shines a light on a hidden bias that affects everything from our daily commutes to high-stakes business decisions. It captures a simple but powerful truth: humans are often irrationally averse to undoing progress, even to the point of sabotaging our own efficiency. We choose the long way around just to avoid the unpleasant feeling of taking a step back. Understanding this quirk in our psychology is more than an academic curiosity – it’s practical knowledge that can help us recognize when our instinct to “not waste effort” is actually causing us to waste more.
Next time you find yourself reluctant to pivot or backtrack, remember that this feeling is a common psychological roadblock. Give yourself permission to override it with logic: if a new route truly promises a better outcome, the bit of progress you give up now is trivial compared to what you stand to gain. As one of the study’s authors wisely noted, “Progress isn’t always about pushing forward. Sometimes, the smartest move is to step back, reassess, and choose the better path, even if it means undoing what’s already been done.” In the end, recognizing our doubling-back aversion is the first step toward avoiding its trap. By reframing how we think about our efforts, we can make more flexible, intelligent decisions – even when that means making a U-turn on the road to success.
Sources:
- Cho, K. Y., & Critcher, C. R. (2025). Doubling-Back Aversion: A Reluctance to Make Progress by Undoing It. Psychological Science, 36(5), 332-349 .
- The Debrief – Tim McMillan (July 21, 2025). Researchers Discover “Doubling-Back Aversion” — The Hidden Bias Sabotaging Smart Decisions .
- PsyPost – Beth Ellwood (2025). Scientists reveal a widespread but previously unidentified psychological phenomenon .
- A Year of Mental Health (Chris Guillebeau, 2025). The Psychology of No Return: Why We Hate Going Back Even When It’s Faster .