7.6.3. In Real Life (2)
Another manifestation of our preference for the way things are is the so-called endowment effect,5 whereby once we have something, however we acquired it, we give it more value than we would give up to obtain it. In one study, students were given a mug with their university emblem, worth $6. In a trading game they subsequently wanted an average of around $5 to give up their mug, whereas students without mugs were willing to offer an average of only around $2 to buy a mug. The mere sense of ownership that came with being given the mug was enough to create a difference between how the two groups valued the object. This is just one of the ways in which human behavior violates the rationality supposed by classical economic theory.
So we can see that if you want people to give something up, you shouldn’t give it to them in the first place, and if you want to introduce something new, you should make people try it before trying to persuade them to accept it. If you can’t do this, you should at least try and introduce the new change elements as part of the familiar experience.
7.6.4. End Notes
Rhinehart, L. (1971). The Dice Man.
Ajzen, I. (2002). Residual effects of past on later behavior: Habituation and reasoned action perspectives. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 107-122. See also: Ouellette, J. A., & Wood, W. (1998). Habit and intention in everyday life: The multiple processes by which past behavior predicts future behavior. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 54-74.
The Wikipedia has an enjoyable, if unstructured, list of cognitive biases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases). A good introduction to cognitive biases and heuristics is Nicholls, N. (1999). Cognitive illusions, heuristics, and climate prediction. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80(7), 1385-1397 (http://ams.allenpress.com/pdfserv/i1520-0477-080-07-1385.pdf).
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453-458.
Kahneman, D., Knetch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1991). Anomalies: The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(1), 193-206. A reverse of the endowment effect is the windfall effect in which people value less highly money they didn’t expect to come to them (like lottery wins and inheritance).
Taken from : Mind Hacks
