Over the past few decades, researchers have followed and analyzed many examples of the escalation of commitment to a situation. The heightened situations are explained in three elements. Firstly, a situation has a costly amount of resources such as time, money and people invested in the project. Next, past behavior leads up to an apex in time where the project has not met expectations or could be in a cautious state of decline. Lastly, these problems all force a decision-maker to make choices that include the options of continuing to pursue a project until completion by adding additional costs, or canceling the project altogether.