Politics, making bad choices with votes, is mainly what I have in mind…but it’s not limited to that. You see it with anything that requires a choice and a commitment of money, time, effort, etc. By and large people don’t want to admit I made a bad choice and it’s time to cut my losses.
Instead there is lots of rationalizing going on, and I think this leads people down paths they otherwise would not have gone, rinse repeat as things worsen. Small concessions to negative consequences build over time, and along the way the initial bad choices may be forgotten. Plenty of people can be swimming in the messes they made without ever a thought of changing their views.
It never helps to point out the degree to which a person has compromised themselves. That has to be done from within, and that’s exactly what is missing.
I think all of this is a huge problem in the world today. But damned if I know what to do about it.
The politics aspect is much more driven by identity and social group than by sunk cost or refusal to have buyer’s remorse. A singular respected leader can turn the ship - churches and pastors were critical in the US civil rights movement, for example - but groups can be more nebulous without a particular leadership structure, like how difficult it is for people to leave Twitter: even though most users agree the experience has significantly degraded, there is no critical mass agreed on a replacement.
The more nebulous groups can break up - Twitter’s engagement is declining - it’s just slow. Maybe years or decades slow to get to the point it’s no longer one of the dominant social media. So I guess keeping the social connections open (giving someone who wants to make a major change an option to still have a friend or family member who will talk to them after), and patience.