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Rethinking the Endowment Effect: How Ownership Affects Our Valuations
The “endowment effect" explains our irrational tendency to overvalue something just because we own it.

In the late 1970s economist Richard Thaler considered two scenarios. In the first, a man owns a case of good wine he bought in the late 1950s for $5 a bottle. When a wine merchant offers to buy his wine for $100 a bottle the man refuses, even though he never paid more than $35 for a bottle of wine in his life. In the second scenario, a man who mows his own lawn receives an offer from his neighbor’s son to mow his lawn for $8. The man refuses, even though he wouldn’t mow his neighbor’s same-sized lawn for less than $20.
Why the inconsistencies? Both scenarios highlight what Thaler termed the “endowment effect,” and it explains our irrational tendency to overvalue something just because we own it. Or, as Thaler puts it, “goods [that] are included in the individual’s endowment will be more highly valued than those not held in the endowment, ceteris paribus.”
Research over the years confirms Thaler’s initial observation. In 1990 he teamed with Daniel Kahneman and Jack L. Knetsch to conduct a clever experiment involving Cornell undergrads and coffee cups. The social scientists distributed coffee cups to half of the students but left the other half empty handed. The former group estimated a selling price and the later group a buying price. Would the students with coffee cups ask for more? This is exactly what the all-star team of researchers found; the undergrads with cups were “unwilling to sell for less than $5.25,” while their less fortunate peers were “unwilling to pay more than $2.25-$2.75.”
The question is what causes the endowment effect. In the 1980s Kahneman and his late partner Amos Tversky pointed out that humans are inherently loss averse. That is, losses hurt more than equivalent gains feel good. This is why Thaler’s hypothetical wine connoisseur demanded so much. For the connoisseur, selling his wine meant losing something, and to reconcile his loss, he demanded more than he would pay if he were the buyer. Kahneman and Tversky’s idea eventually helped Kahneman earn a Noble Price, but when it comes to explaining the endowment effect there might be more to the story.
In the last few years some psychologists have pointed out that the endowment effect results not from loss aversion but from a sense of possession, a feeling that an object is “mine.” In 2009 Assistant Professor of Marketing at Carnegie Mellon Carey K. Morewedge and a team of researchers conducted two experiments also involving coffee mugs. In one experiment, they found that buyers were willing to pay as much for a coffee mug as sellers demanded when the buyers already owned an identical mug. In another, “buyers’ brokers and sellers’ brokers agreed on the price of a mug, but both brokers traded at higher prices when they happened to own mugs that were identical to the ones they were trading.” Since the endowment effect disappeared when buyers owned what they were selling, Morewedge and his team concluded that, “ownership and not loss aversion causes the endowment effect in the standard experimental paradigm.”
Similarly, in 2010 Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior William Maddux and his colleagues published a study suggesting that the endowment effect is stronger in western cultures than East Asian cultures. In one experiment, one group of participants wrote about how important a white ceramic Starbucks coffee mug was to them; the researchers incorporated this ripple to put them into an “object-associate” mindset. The other group – the no-object-associate condition – wrote about how the mug was unimportant to them. Maddux et al found that
when object associations were made salient, European Canadians showed a significant endowment effect, whereas Japanese showed a striking trend toward a reversal of the normally robust endowment effect… [The results from all three experiments in this study] are consistent with cultural differences in self-enhancement and self-criticism, and we believe they are unlikely to be due to loss aversion, as individuals from Eastern cultures tend to be more prevention focused and biased toward the status quo than Westerners are.
This brings me to a brand new study in the Journal of Consumer Research by Sara Loughran Dommer, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Georgia Institute of Technology, and her colleague Vanitha Swaminathan, Associate Professor of Business Administration at University of Pittsburgh. Riffing on the findings produced by Morewedge, Maddux and other researchers, Dommer and Swaminathan posit that, “loss aversion has typically accounted for the endowment effect, but an alternative explanation suggests ownership creates an association between the item and the self, and this possession-self link increases the value of the good.”
To see if this is true the researchers conducted several experiments, in which they subjected participants to social self-threats. If ownership creates an association between the item and the self, then, as a means to strengthen identity, participants should demand more for items when the self is threatened. In other words, “after a self-threat… people can use possessions to affirm their self, and endowment effects are likely to be exaggerated.”
In the first experiment they manipulated social self-treat by asking half of the 46 participants to imagine themselves in a past relationship in which they felt rejected and write about thoughts and feelings associated with the relationship (self-threat condition); the other half wrote about an average day (control condition). Next, participants in the endowed condition received a good, in this case a ballpoint pen, and indicated if they preferred to keep it or exchange it for a cash amount ranging from ¢25 to $10. Their peers in the nonendowed condition picked between receiving the pen or the cash amount for each of the 40 prices.
In the second experiment 253 students from the University of Pittsburgh completed the same social self-threat manipulation featured the first experiment. But this experiment included a clever addition: the good was a reusable tote bag with the logo of either their university (Pitt) or their university’s rival (Penn State) prominently printed on it. The purpose of this addition was to test if participants valued in-group goods differently than out-group goods. Finally, an experimenter randomly determined the price of the tote bags and asked buyers and sellers if they wanted either the bag or the amount of money it was worth.
The first thing Dommer and Swaminathan found was that social-self threat indeed affected how people valued the ballpoint pen in the first experiment:
As expected… a social self-threat increased selling prices but had no effect on buying prices. These results support our hypothesis that a social self-threat increases selling prices, thus moderating the endowment effect. After a social self-threat, individuals likely have strong possession-self links because possessions can enhance the self and help individuals cope with the threat… our findings, therefore, are consistent with the ownership account.
Similar results surfaced in the second experiment, which in addition to supporting the ownership account highlighted differences between how men and women valued in-group goods and out-group goods.
The results from [the second experiment] demonstrate that social identity plays a moderating role in the endowment effect by affecting selling prices, thus providing further support for the ownership account. We find that sellers experiencing a social self-threat have higher valuations of in-group goods than of generic goods, thus exacerbating the endowment effect. Regarding out-group goods, after a social self-threat, in the selling condition men had lower valuations of such possessions than of generic goods, while female sellers exhibited no such change in valuations. Therefore, the endowment effect for an out-group good was not present for men but remained for women.
Dommer and Swaminathan conducted two additional experiments that also examined how social self-threat and associations with the totes bag affected the endowment effect. They confirmed that when it comes to valuating identity-linked goods, “men… [are] more likely to perceive the self as separate from others [and] more likely to devalue out-group goods… [Whereas] women [are] less likely to attend to out-group differences, unless the intergroup comparison are made salient.” The main conclusion, however, is that we should understand the endowment effect as a function of ownership, and not loss aversion:
The loss aversion account would predict that sellers are equally attracted to a good as are buyers, regardless of the good’s social identity associations… We find, however, that social identity associations affect selling prices, which suggests that such associations have a stronger effect on owner’s evaluations. The ownership account would attribute this result to the social identity association changing the strength of the possession-self link… [In addition to other research, this implies] that motivational factors can often override the impact of loss aversion in influencing valuations for goods.
One implication of these findings is pertinent for clothing stores. If ownership increases how much a consumer is willing to pay for a good, it would be wise for storeowners to simulate a feeling of ownership in the customer. Enter fitting rooms: research suggests that customers are more willing to purchase an item of clothing after they try it on. Dommer and Swaminathan highlight similar tactics: free trials, sampling, and coupons, for example.
Previous research hints at this. A 2004 paper by Professor of Marketing Gail Tom “[demonstrated] that the endowment effect is higher for goods that are associated with self.” In a 1998 paper Professor of Marketing Michal Strahilevitz and the Economist-Psychologist George Loewenstein showed that the endowment effect is higher “for goods that sellers have owned for a long time.”
The takeaway is obvious enough. We humans are not perfect calculators. Instead, we overvalue our possessions because they contribute to our identity and the identities of the groups we belong to. We don’t overvalue goods because we’re loss averse; we overvalue goods because they are part of who we are.
Image via shuttershock
How New York's largest hospital system is predicting COVID-19 spikes
Northwell Health is using insights from website traffic to forecast COVID-19 hospitalizations two weeks in the future.
- The machine-learning algorithm works by analyzing the online behavior of visitors to the Northwell Health website and comparing that data to future COVID-19 hospitalizations.
- The tool, which uses anonymized data, has so far predicted hospitalizations with an accuracy rate of 80 percent.
- Machine-learning tools are helping health-care professionals worldwide better constrain and treat COVID-19.
The value of forecasting
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTA0Njk2OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMzM2NDQzOH0.rid9regiDaKczCCKBsu7wrHkNQ64Vz_XcOEZIzAhzgM/img.jpg?width=980" id="2bb93" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="31345afbdf2bd408fd3e9f31520c445a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1546" data-height="1056" />Northwell emergency departments use the dashboard to monitor in real time.
Credit: Northwell Health
<p>One unique benefit of forecasting COVID-19 hospitalizations is that it allows health systems to better prepare, manage and allocate resources. For example, if the tool forecasted a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations in two weeks, Northwell Health could begin:</p><ul><li>Making space for an influx of patients</li><li>Moving personal protective equipment to where it's most needed</li><li>Strategically allocating staff during the predicted surge</li><li>Increasing the number of tests offered to asymptomatic patients</li></ul><p>The health-care field is increasingly using machine learning. It's already helping doctors develop <a href="https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2020/06/09/dc19-1870" target="_blank">personalized care plans for diabetes patients</a>, improving cancer screening techniques, and enabling mental health professionals to better predict which patients are at <a href="https://healthitanalytics.com/news/ehr-data-fuels-accurate-predictive-analytics-for-suicide-risk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">elevated risk of suicide</a>, to name a few applications.</p><p>Health systems around the world have already begun exploring how <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315944/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">machine learning can help battle the pandemic</a>, including better COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, contact tracing, and drug and vaccine development.</p><p>Cruzen said these kinds of tools represent a shift in how health systems can tackle a wide variety of problems.</p><p>"Health care has always used the past to predict the future, but not in this mathematical way," Cruzen said. "I think [Northwell Health's new predictive tool] really is a great first example of how we should be attacking a lot of things as we go forward."</p>Making machine-learning tools openly accessible
<p>Northwell Health has made its predictive tool <a href="https://github.com/northwell-health/covid-web-data-predictor" target="_blank">available for free</a> to any health system that wishes to utilize it.</p><p>"COVID is everybody's problem, and I think developing tools that can be used to help others is sort of why people go into health care," Dr. Cruzen said. "It was really consistent with our mission."</p><p>Open collaboration is something the world's governments and health systems should be striving for during the pandemic, said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health's president and CEO.</p><p>"Whenever you develop anything and somebody else gets it, they improve it and they continue to make it better," Dowling said. "As a country, we lack data. I believe very, very strongly that we should have been and should be now working with other countries, including China, including the European Union, including England and others to figure out how to develop a health surveillance system so you can anticipate way in advance when these things are going to occur."</p><p>In all, Northwell Health has treated more than 112,000 COVID patients. During the pandemic, Dowling said he's seen an outpouring of goodwill, collaboration, and sacrifice from the community and the tens of thousands of staff who work across Northwell.</p><p>"COVID has changed our perspective on everything—and not just those of us in health care, because it has disrupted everybody's life," Dowling said. "It has demonstrated the value of community, how we help one another."</p>3,000-pound Triceratops skull unearthed in South Dakota
"You dream about these kinds of moments when you're a kid," said lead paleontologist David Schmidt.
Excavation of a triceratops skull in South Dakota.
- The triceratops skull was first discovered in 2019, but was excavated over the summer of 2020.
- It was discovered in the South Dakota Badlands, an area where the Triceratops roamed some 66 million years ago.
- Studying dinosaurs helps scientists better understand the evolution of all life on Earth.
Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We had to be really careful," Schmidt told St. Louis Public Radio. "We couldn't disturb anything at all, because at that point, it was under law enforcement investigation. They were telling us, 'Don't even make footprints,' and I was thinking, 'How are we supposed to do that?'"</p><p>Another difficulty was the mammoth size of the skull: about 7 feet long and more than 3,000 pounds. (For context, the largest triceratops skull ever unearthed was about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2010.483632" target="_blank">8.2 feet long</a>.) The skull of Schmidt's dinosaur was likely a <em>Triceratops prorsus, </em>one of two species of triceratops that roamed what's now North America about 66 million years ago.</p>Credit: David Schmidt / Westminster College
<p>The triceratops was an herbivore, but it was also a favorite meal of the T<em>yrannosaurus rex</em>. That probably explains why the Dakotas contain many scattered triceratops bone fragments, and, less commonly, complete bones and skulls. In summer 2019, for example, a separate team on a dig in North Dakota made <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">headlines</a> after unearthing a complete triceratops skull that measured five feet in length.</p><p>Michael Kjelland, a biology professor who participated in that excavation, said digging up the dinosaur was like completing a "multi-piece, 3-D jigsaw puzzle" that required "engineering that rivaled SpaceX," he jokingly told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/science/triceratops-skull-65-million-years-old.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a>.</p>Morrison Formation in Colorado
James St. John via Flickr
Triceratops illustration
Credit: Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons |
Put on a happy face? “Deep acting” associated with improved work life
New research suggests you can't fake your emotional state to improve your work life — you have to feel it.
What is deep acting?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTQ1NDk2OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxNTY5MzA0Nn0._s7aP25Es1CInq51pbzGrUj3GtOIRWBHZxCBFnbyXY8/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=333%2C-1%2C333%2C-1&height=700" id="ddf09" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9dc42c4d6a8e372ad7b72907b46ecd3f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />Arlie Russell Hochschild (pictured) laid out the concept of emotional labor in her 1983 book, "The Managed Heart."
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
<p>Deep and surface acting are the principal components of emotional labor, a buzz phrase you have likely seen flitting about the Twittersphere. Today, "<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/5ea9f140-f722-4214-bb57-8b84f9418a7e" target="_blank">emotional labor</a>" has been adopted by groups as diverse as family counselors, academic feminists, and corporate CEOs, and each has redefined it with a patented spin. But while the phrase has splintered into a smorgasbord of pop-psychological arguments, its initial usage was more specific.</p><p>First coined by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her 1983 book, "<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520272941/the-managed-heart" target="_blank">The Managed Heart</a>," emotional labor describes the work we do to regulate our emotions on the job. Hochschild's go-to example is the flight attendant, who is tasked with being "nicer than natural" to enhance the customer experience. While at work, flight attendants are expected to smile and be exceedingly helpful even if they are wrestling with personal issues, the passengers are rude, and that one kid just upchucked down the center aisle. Hochschild's counterpart to the flight attendant is the bill collector, who must instead be "nastier than natural."</p><p>Such personas may serve an organization's mission or commercial interests, but if they cause emotional dissonance, they can potentially lead to high emotional costs for the employee—bringing us back to deep and surface acting.</p><p>Deep acting is the process by which people modify their emotions to match their expected role. Deep actors still encounter the negative emotions, but they devise ways to <a href="http://www.selfinjury.bctr.cornell.edu/perch/resources/what-is-emotion-regulationsinfo-brief.pdf" target="_blank">regulate those emotions</a> and return to the desired state. Flight attendants may modify their internal state by talking through harsh emotions (say, with a coworker), focusing on life's benefits (next stop Paris!), physically expressing their desired emotion (smiling and deep breaths), or recontextualizing an inauspicious situation (not the kid's fault he got sick).</p><p>Conversely, surface acting occurs when employees display ersatz emotions to match those expected by their role. These actors are the waiters who smile despite being crushed by the stress of a dinner rush. They are the CEOs who wear a confident swagger despite feelings of inauthenticity. And they are the bouncers who must maintain a steely edge despite humming show tunes in their heart of hearts.</p><p>As we'll see in the research, surface acting can degrade our mental well-being. This deterioration can be especially true of people who must contend with negative emotions or situations inside while displaying an elated mood outside. Hochschild argues such emotional labor can lead to exhaustion and self-estrangement—that is, surface actors erect a bulwark against anger, fear, and stress, but that disconnect estranges them from the emotions that allow them to connect with others and live fulfilling lives.</p>Don't fake it till you make it
<p>Most studies on emotional labor have focused on customer service for the obvious reason that such jobs prescribe emotional states—service with a smile or, if you're in the bouncing business, a scowl. But <a href="https://eller.arizona.edu/people/allison-s-gabriel" target="_blank">Allison Gabriel</a>, associate professor of management and organizations at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management, wanted to explore how employees used emotional labor strategies in their intra-office interactions and which strategies proved most beneficial.</p><p>"What we wanted to know is whether people choose to engage in emotion regulation when interacting with their co-workers, why they choose to regulate their emotions if there is no formal rule requiring them to do so, and what benefits, if any, they get out of this effort," Gabriel said in <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200117162703.htm" target="_blank">a press release</a>.</p><p>Across three studies, she and her colleagues surveyed more than 2,500 full-time employees on their emotional regulation with coworkers. The survey asked participants to agree or disagree with statements such as "I try to experience the emotions that I show to my coworkers" or "I fake a good mood when interacting with my coworkers." Other statements gauged the outcomes of such strategies—for example, "I feel emotionally drained at work." Participants were drawn from industries as varied as education, engineering, and financial services.</p><p>The results, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fapl0000473" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">published in the Journal of Applied Psychology</a>, revealed four different emotional strategies. "Deep actors" engaged in high levels of deep acting; "low actors" leaned more heavily on surface acting. Meanwhile, "non-actors" engaged in negligible amounts of emotional labor, while "regulators" switched between both. The survey also revealed two drivers for such strategies: prosocial and impression management motives. The former aimed to cultivate positive relationships, the latter to present a positive front.</p><p>The researchers found deep actors were driven by prosocial motives and enjoyed advantages from their strategy of choice. These actors reported lower levels of fatigue, fewer feelings of inauthenticity, improved coworker trust, and advanced progress toward career goals. </p><p>As Gabriel told <a href="https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/new-psychology-research-suggests-deep-acting-can-reduce-fatigue-and-improve-your-work-life-59081" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">PsyPost in an interview</a>: "So, it's a win-win-win in terms of feeling good, performing well, and having positive coworker interactions."</p><p>Non-actors did not report the emotional exhaustion of their low-actor peers, but they also didn't enjoy the social gains of the deep actors. Finally, the regulators showed that the flip-flopping between surface and deep acting drained emotional reserves and strained office relationships.</p><p>"I think the 'fake it until you make it' idea suggests a survival tactic at work," Gabriel noted. "Maybe plastering on a smile to simply get out of an interaction is easier in the short run, but long term, it will undermine efforts to improve your health and the relationships you have at work. </p><p>"It all boils down to, 'Let's be nice to each other.' Not only will people feel better, but people's performance and social relationships can also improve."</p>You'll be glad ya' decided to smile
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="88a0a6a8d1c1abfcf7b1aca8e71247c6"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QOSgpq9EGSw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>But as with any research that relies on self-reported data, there are confounders here to untangle. Even during anonymous studies, participants may select socially acceptable answers over honest ones. They may further interpret their goal progress and coworker interactions more favorably than is accurate. And certain work conditions may not produce the same effects, such as toxic work environments or those that require employees to project negative emotions.</p><p>There also remains the question of the causal mechanism. If surface acting—or switching between surface and deep acting—is more mentally taxing than genuinely feeling an emotion, then what physiological process causes this fatigue? <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00151/full" target="_blank">One study published in the <em>Frontiers in Human Neuroscience</em></a><em> </em>measured hemoglobin density in participants' brains using an fNIRS while they expressed emotions facially. The researchers found no significant difference in energy consumed in the prefrontal cortex by those asked to deep act or surface act (though, this study too is limited by a lack of real-life task).<br></p><p>With that said, Gabriel's studies reinforce much of the current research on emotional labor. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2041386611417746" target="_blank">A 2011 meta-analysis</a> found that "discordant emotional labor states" (read: surface acting) were associated with harmful effects on well-being and performance. The analysis found no such consequences for deep acting. <a href="https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0022876" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Another meta-analysis</a> found an association between surface acting and impaired well-being, job attitudes, and performance outcomes. Conversely, deep acting was associated with improved emotional performance.</p><p>So, although there's still much to learn on the emotional labor front, it seems Van Dyke's advice to a Leigh was half correct. We should put on a happy face, but it will <a href="https://bigthink.com/design-for-good/everything-you-should-know-about-happiness-in-one-infographic" target="_self">only help if we can feel it</a>.</p>World's oldest work of art found in a hidden Indonesian valley
Archaeologists discover a cave painting of a wild pig that is now the world's oldest dated work of representational art.
Pig painting at Leang Tedongnge in Indonesia, made at 45,500 years ago.
- Archaeologists find a cave painting of a wild pig that is at least 45,500 years old.
- The painting is the earliest known work of representational art.
- The discovery was made in a remote valley on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Oldest Cave Art Found in Sulawesi
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a9734e306f0914bfdcbe79a1e317a7f0"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b-wAYtBxn7E?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What can Avicenna teach us about the mind-body problem?
The Persian polymath and philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age teaches us about self-awareness.
