A BIAS IN THE PREDICTION OF TASTES

Recent research has documented an 'endowment effect' whereby people be come more attached to objects they receive than would be predicted fro m their prior desire to possess the object. In two experiments, we tes t whether people are aware of the effect - whether they realise that t hey will become attached to an object once they receive it. In both ex periments, subjects without an object underestimated how much they wou ld value the object when they received it.