2021/03/31 by Sumitava Mukherjee, Narayanan Srinivasan · 1 citation
Decision Sciences · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Psychology of Social Influence
paper · doi:10.1080/02699931.2021.1907741
openalex publication_date 2021/03/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
A large part of our daily activities involves judging the psychological value of time. This study tested a previously less explored aspect about whether people are loss averse for time - i.e. do losses of time loom larger than corresponding gains? Using comparative hedonic judgments, the impact of prospective gains versus losses of time was examined for common contexts like waiting and local travel based on suggestions by typical navigation apps. The magnitude of time was varied without an explicit reference point (experiment 1) and with a clear reference without any overt consequence (experiment 2). The contextual nature of outcome along with magnitude was also manipulated (experiment 3). Prospective gains loomed as larger or equal to losses for low magnitudes while there was a trend of losses to loom larger than gains only for high magnitudes of time. These results weaken the empirical evidence for loss aversion and highlight its magnitude-dependent nature thus presenting a nuanced perspective to the affective psychology of time.