13 checked facts

Economics

Everything on this site about economics — each one naming the study behind it.

You view your own success as someone else's loss.
Belief in a zero-sum world leads people to interpret social and economic gains as fixed pots where one person's progre…
You prioritize fairness only when it benefits you.
In the ultimatum game, participants often reject 'unfair' offers, even when rejecting means they lose all potential mo…
You prioritize small gains over large rewards.
The 'present bias' is an economic model describing the tendency to value smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delay…
You value an object more once it becomes yours.
The endowment effect shows that ownership increases your valuation of an item, even if you acquired it moments ago.…
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…
Losing ten dollars feels worse than winning ten feels.
Kahneman and Tversky's 1992 paper established that the pain of losing is approximately 2.25 times more powerful than t…
You choose the middle option to avoid extremes.
A third, inferior option can make the other choices more attractive.…
You value items more just because they are rare.
A 1975 study showed that participants rated cookies as more desirable when they were presented in a nearly empty jar.…
You value your possessions simply because you own them.
People demand more money to give up an item than they would have paid to acquire it.…
You value a small reward today over a larger one.
Hyperbolic discounting is the tendency for people to choose smaller, immediate rewards over larger, later rewards as t…
You value the things you own more than identical objects.
The mere ownership effect demonstrates that merely possessing an item increases its perceived value significantly.…
You value your possessions more than they are worth.
People demand a higher price to sell an item they own than they would pay to acquire that exact same item.…
You continue losing ventures because of the investment already made.
A 1985 study found that people are more likely to continue investing in a failing project if they have already committ…