Economists typically assume you’d go for the $10\/$12 option because of the belief that people try to maximize their own gains. Choosing the other scenario would just be irrational.<\/strong><\/p>\n But new research conducted in collaboration with a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management shows that if a person is feeling threatened, or concerned with their status, they are more likely to choose the option that gives them less<\/strong>. And although this choice might seem irrational from an economic perspective, this choice satisfies an important psychological need.<\/p>\n People who do this, “have a reason for their behaviour, and that reason is to protect themselves from low status,<\/strong>” described as a low position or rank in relation to others, says Prof. Geoffrey Leonardelli, who co-wrote the paper with Vanessa Bohns from the University of Waterloo and Jun Gu from Australia’s Monash University.<\/p>\n Through a series of experiments, the researchers found that people who showed a systematic preference for “relative outcomes” (economic payoffs which gave them the same as or more than others) had a focus on security and sought to protect themselves from being assigned to a lower position or rank. But those who looked for “absolute” outcomes (overall value) had a “growth” focus, one that goes after maximum positive results<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Jun Gu, the lead author of the research, noted that “People with a security focus also tend to walk away from economic deals that suggest they have low status, even if walking away means earning less money than they could have.”<\/p>\n In one experiment, participants were offered $1 but were also told that the party making the offer would get $9. Even though they would have pocketed an additional $1, some 48% of those with a security focus rejected the offer, whereas only 17% of those with a growth focus turned the offer down.<\/p>\n Previous research by Prof. Leonardelli and his collaborators has shown that, in negotiations, those with a growth focus tend to set higher goals, are more aggressive in their negotiating, and ultimately attain better gains for all those involved.<\/p>\n “People with a growth focus appear to more easily move back and forth between cooperation and competition<\/strong>,” because they have no special fears or concerns about their own security, says Prof. Leonardelli.<\/p>\n If governments want to pursue economic policies that promote growth, the study’s findings suggest people first need to feel secure enough to support and participate in those policies<\/strong>, says Prof. Leonardelli.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management press release via ScienceDaily: Imagine you have a choice to make. In one scenario, you’d get $8 and somebody else —… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,60],"tags":[87,12,252],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12072"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12136,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12072\/revisions\/12136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"woman](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/thinking_considering.jpg\")
<\/a>Imagine you have a choice to make. In one scenario, you’d get $8 and somebody else — a stranger — would get $8 too.<\/strong> In the other, you’d get $10; the stranger would get $12.<\/p>\n