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perception
You judge objects as more valuable if they are scarce.
The scarcity heuristic leads people to place a higher value on items that are perceived as rare or difficult to obtain.
In a 1975 experiment, participants rated identical cookies as more desirable if they were presented in a jar with only two left compared to a jar with ten. Scarcity acts as a mental shortcut for quality, suggesting that if something is limited, it must be valuable. This bias overrides your objective assessment of utility.
You want what you cannot easily have.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Worchel, Lee, and Adewole (1975)
- What the check found
- The claim accurately reflects the seminal 1975 study by Worchel, Lee, and Adewole, which is a classic demonstration of the scarcity heuristic in behavioral psychology.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.