Why won't you sell something for the price you'd never have paid for it?

The moment a thing becomes yours, your brain quietly marks up its price.

The endowment effect is the tendency to value something more simply because you own it. In Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler's classic study, people randomly given a mug demanded about twice as much to sell it as other people were willing to pay to buy the same mug. Owning the item reframes letting it go as a loss, and losses hurt more than equal gains, so the seller's price jumps.

You'd never pay 2 million VND for that old jacket in your closet, but when a friend offers to buy it, suddenly 2 million feels too low to let it go.

Owning something inflates the price you'd accept to give it up, even when you got it minutes ago.

Before you defend a possession, an old idea, or a project, ask: would I buy this today at this price if I didn't already have it?

Mine = pricier. The label 'mine' adds a tax to the price tag.

Learn the idea and practice English at the same time.