Author Dan Ariely explains the hidden forces that drive how we make decisions, which are far less rational than we think. How we decide what things are worth to us and how we tackle long-term goals are all shockingly irrational. Give others easy comparisons, so they’ll value you more highly. Free is really just another price, but a powerful one. When people hear something is free they go insane.
Dan Ariely says free is a powerful emotional trigger, but at its core, it’s just another price – the price of zero dollars. If we buy something and it’s bad, we lose money. But if we get something for free, the potential downside is zero. So we value free items more highly than we should. If I buy something for $0.26 cents, chances are you wouldn’t quote me a price that’s twice as high if you’ve held it for more than a minute.
This is because we value things more highly once we own them – an effect known as the endowment effect. At Duke University, this phenomenon was investigated with baseball tickets and found that lottery winners who won tickets wouldn’t sell them for less than $2,400.
Random Citizen 