Why A 'Plan B' Approach Can Backfire

Always take backup. We hear it all the time. In everyday life, it translates to something like, “It pays to have a Plan B” or allusions to the Robert Burns poem about “the best laid plans” often going awry.

- Barry Libert, Megan Beck & Jerry Wind

But new Wharton research shows that there is an important downside to making a backup plan – merely thinking through a backup plan may actually cause people to exert less effort toward their primary goal, and consequently be less likely to achieve that goal they were striving for. Jihae Shin, a former Wharton Ph.D. student who is now a professor at the University of Wisconsin, and Katherine Milkman, a Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions, detail their findings in the paper, “How Backup Plans Can Harm Goal Pursuit: The Unexpected Downside of Being Prepared for Failure,” which was published in the journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

The paper was inspired by a conversation that Shin and Milkman had when Shin was working to get an academic faculty job while completing the Ph.D. programme at Wharton. While some of her peers were thinking about backup options in case they didn’t find a job in academia, Shin found herself not wanting to because she worried that, “if I make a backup plan, it could make me work less hard to achieve my goal, and ultimately lower my chances of success.”