How Loss Aversion Affects Our Perceptions of Weight
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide health or medical advice. Consult your doctor about making changes to your diet or exercise routine.
With vaccination rates increasing and the country opening up, I considered flying to a neighboring province to enjoy some version of a vacation. Much to my delight, I found flights at ridiculously low prices—only to check back the next morning and discover that the cost of a ticket had doubled.
And so began my morning of obsessively tracking, refreshing, and searching for cheaper flights. The original price became my “ideal price,” and anything higher felt like a loss. It wasn’t until hours later I realized that I had fallen prey to loss aversion (with a hint of anchoring bias).
Loss aversion in everyday life
One of the key tenets of behavioral science, loss aversion is a concept that comes out of Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory. This theory demonstrates how we register losses more acutely than we do gains, and that we tend to make decisions in the interest of avoiding potential losses. This knowledge has wide implications in several domains, especially in finance, insurance, and economics.
But how does this bias shape decisions that aren’t related to money? Early research shows that prospect theory and its related behaviors may extend to how we view weight loss.
Loss aversion and weight loss
A group of researchers from the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri surveyed college students, gathering data on their BMI and eating behaviors, and assessed whether they believed they were in control of their weight.
Participants then participated in a decision-making task where they chose between a risky gamble (with a 50% chance of winning) and a guaranteed reward. (Note that in both cases, the rewards were hypothetical.) Some of the prizes were monetary (e.g. winning $10), while others related to body weight (e.g. losing 10 lbs).2
Participants showed similar risk preference and loss aversion attitudes to weight as they did to monetary choices—in other words, people who were averse to losing money also demonstrated a weight gain aversion.
Notably, this result did not differ between participants who were satisfied with their current weight and those who were not. In other words, the way in which people valued potential weight loss did not correlate with their actual body mass. Moreover, the threat of weight gain loomed larger than the opportunity of equivalent weight loss: people registered it almost twice as much.
References
- Kahneman, Daniel; Tversky, Amos (1979). “Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk”. Econometrica. 47 (2): 263–291. doi:10.2307/1914185. ISSN 0012-9682.
- Lim, S. L., & Bruce, A. S. (2015). Prospect theory and body mass: characterizing psychological parameters for weight-related risk attitudes and weight-gain aversion. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 330.
- VanWormer, J. J., Martinez, A. M., Martinson, B. C., Crain, A. L., Benson, G. A., Cosentino, D. L., & Pronk, N. P. (2009). Self-weighing promotes weight loss for obese adults. American journal of preventive medicine, 36(1), 70-73.
- VanWormer, J. J., Linde, J. A., Harnack, L. J., Stovitz, S. D., & Jeffery, R. W. (2012). Self-weighing frequency is associated with weight gain prevention over 2 years among working adults. International journal of behavioral medicine, 19(3), 351-358.
- Adda Bjarnadottir, A. B. (2017, January 3). Why you may want to weigh yourself every day. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/daily-weighing#TOC_TITLE_HDR_5
- Steinberg, D. M., Bennett, G. G., Askew, S., & Tate, D. F. (2015). Weighing every day matters: daily weighing improves weight loss and adoption of weight control behaviors. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 115(4), 511-518.
- Eldad Yechiam. (2015). The psychology of gains and losses: More complicated than previously thought. https://www.apa.org. https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2015/01/gains-losses
- Jospe, M. R., Roy, M., Brown, R. C., Williams, S. M., Osborne, H. R., Meredith‐Jones, K. A., … & Taylor, R. W. (2017). The effect of different types of monitoring strategies on weight loss: a randomized controlled trial. Obesity, 25(9), 1490-1498.
- The most common causes of weight fluctuation. (2021, January 19). University Health News. https://universityhealthnews.com/daily/nutrition/a-daily-weight-fluctuation-nothing-to-worry-about/
- The Decision Lab. (2020, August 24). Loss aversion. https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/loss-aversion/
- Sandburg, K. (2019, February 20). Prospect theory. Medium. https://medium.com/strategy-dynamics/prospect-theory-37eaa1e250bb
- Rapacon, S. (2017). Nobel-prize-winning economists share 4 ways to set yourself up for success. Grow from Acorns + CNBC. https://grow.acorns.com/nobel-prize-winning-economists-share-4-ways-to-set-yourself-up-for-success/
- Corporate Finance Institute. (2019, April 16). Loss aversion – Definition, overview, and examples. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/trading-investing/loss-aversion/
About the Author
Kaylee Somerville
Kaylee is a research and teaching assistant at the University of Calgary in the areas of finance, entrepreneurship, and workplace harassment. Holding international experience in events, marketing, and consulting, Kaylee hopes to use behavioral research to help individuals at work. She is particularly interested in the topics of gender, leadership, and productivity. Kaylee completed her Bachelor of Commerce degree from the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.
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