2003/09/01 by A. Peter McGraw, Philip E. Tetlock, Orie V. Kristel · 1 citation
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · Decision Sciences · Psychology · Mathematics · #Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification #Psychology of Social Influence #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #Fungibility #Microeconomics #Ranking (information retrieval) #Value (mathematics) #Economics #Positive economics #Matching (statistics) #Perspective (graphical) #Liberian dollar #Social psychology #Actuarial science #Psychology #Computer science #Mathematics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/376805
openalex publication_date 2003/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Four experiments test predictions on endowment and mental accounting effects of a theoretical perspective that stresses the symbolic-relational significance for consumer transactions and that posits the placement of qualitative boundaries on fungibility. Although people accepted proposals to buy objects acquired in market-pricing relationships as routine, the same proposals in communal-sharing, authority-ranking, and equality-matching relationships triggered distress and erratically high dollar valuations. Symbolic ownership history also moderated valuations in a purely market setting, and the effects of symbolic-relational source of income extended even to spending decisions. Examination of the model's ordinal predictions revealed stronger effects for equality-matching than for authority-ranking relationships.