Why Perceived Value Increases with Ownership
The Basic Idea
Have you ever had an item of yours appraised – perhaps a laptop you were hoping to trade in for store credit – and been disappointed by the estimated value of your item? This cognitive bias is known as the endowment effect: the human tendency to attach more value to items we own simply because they belong to us.5 In other words, once we own something, we value it more.
For most things are differently valued by those who have them and by those who wish to get them: what belongs to us, and what we give away, always seems very precious to us.
– Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics book IX (F. H. Peters translation)
