We tend to value an object we already own more than an identical one that is not ours. But information is not an object: you cannot hold it, and it stays with you even after you pass it on. So this was tested with facts that have no use at all. What happened?
People did not like giving information up. The experiments used facts of , helping nobody earn money or complete a task, and still found that participants resisted giving up information they had already received. appears to attach to a fact too. Framing a choice as , rather than as a gain of it, changed decisions. So can attach to knowing, not only to an object.
In a first experiment participants treated a bet on information differently when an identical outcome was presented as a gain or as a loss. That tested sensitivity to loss in a domain that is not money.
A second experiment gave participants information and then examined how much they were willing to give it up for. Merely holding it raised the value they placed on it.
A third experiment showed that the pattern of choice between a safe and a risky option also changed when facts were presented through gain or loss.
The resemblance between objects and information is interesting, and behavior in a laboratory is no substitute for examining real arguments or decisions with heavy consequences.
wat. A useless fact can feel more precious simply because it has already been handed to us.
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The difficulty of giving up an opinion or a piece of knowledge may come partly from a sense of ownership, even where it has no useful value.
How do we know?
Three experiments compared choices about information with no practical use when it was presented as a gain, as a loss, or as something already in the participant’s hands.
What is still unknown
The experiments examined facts and defined choice games. They do not prove that the same mechanism alone explains political beliefs or important decisions.
Learn something?
Where to next
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