Ownership Effect

Why we overvalue what we have. An experiment: You receive a mug as a gift. Instantly, it is worth more to you than the identical mug in the store. This is the ownership effect—a cognitive bias that makes you poor and inflexible.



This book explains why people demand irrational prices for their possessions, hold bad investments too long, and miss opportunities because they cannot let go. The mechanism is loss aversion. Losing hurts twice as much as winning feels good.



We analyze how to overcome the effect. Learn to see ownership as temporary. Understand opportunity costs. Every thing you own also owns you. It costs space, time, mental energy. Freedom is not having more. Freedom is needing less.