Six quirks of ownership

Six quirks of ownership

Dan Ariely, in his book Predictably Irrational argues that ownership has 6 strange effects on us:

1. Ownership increases perceived value to us: As soon as we acquire something we start to develop an attachment to it. Just the sheer fact of ownership increases how much we value it - we seem to develop a relationship with objects.
2. We tend to focus on losses: When selling we tend to overlook the money we'll be gaining and focus on the object we'll be losing. Our natural aversion to feeling bad then motivates us to place a higher asking-price on the long-cherished house, car or record collection than the market will bear.
3. We assume others share our perspective: Surely potential buyers understand how strongly we feel about our dusty old vinyl records? No, they don't care - in fact they're far more likely to notice how badly we've stored them or what poor taste in music we have.
4. Effort increases perceived value: A table I have bought and struggled to build myself has more value to me than the same table I bought, for the same price, ready assembled. Expending our own effort means we've invested ourselves in an object, so it has more perceived value to us. Other people don't recognise this (and there's no reason why they should).
5. Virtual ownership: We can even start feeling we own something before we actually do. Dan Ariely argues that the prices people are prepared to pay on auction sites like EBay are often inflated by people's imagined ownership. Once we place our first bid we start to fantasise about ownership. Consequently when other bids come in we ignore our previously stated maximum because we're now starting to value the item more, since we've been thinking about owning it.
6. Partial ownership: Marketing executives know the power of ownership so they use all kinds of tricks to encourage partial ownership because it often leads on to full ownership. We don't usually return our furniture within the 30-day money-back guarantee period because we've grown attached to it - it's ours.