A moving social benchmark makes abandoning a long-term goal a perfectly rational choice rather than a failure of willpower.
April 25, 2026
Original Paper
Rational Foreclosure: A Stochastic Reference Point Model of Aspirational Abandonment under Positional Drift
SSRN · 6614858
The Takeaway
Positional drift happens when the finish line for a goal moves faster than a person can run toward it. This model shows that giving up is not a failure of willpower but a logical response to a changing environment. Behavioral economists usually treat quitting as a mistake that needs to be fixed with better habits. The research proves that increasing the volatility of social standards actually makes people wait longer before they quit because they hope for a lucky break. This changes how we view perseverance in highly competitive fields like academia or high-stakes entrepreneurship.
From the abstract
<p>The behavioral economics consensus holds that when people abandon long-term goals, they are making a mistake. Present bias, scarcity-induced bandwidth depletion, and insufficient self-control are the standard diagnoses; commitment devices and nudges are the standard prescriptions. This paper shows that for a specific and identifiable class of agents, the standard diagnosis is wrong and the standard prescription causes harm.</p> <p>An agent with deterministic wealth accumulation faces a social