The $7 Mug Problem

In a famous 1990 experiment, Richard Thaler and his colleagues gave coffee mugs to half the students in a class. Then they asked mug owners to sell and non-owners to buy. The result? Owners demanded around $7 on average. Buyers offered around $3. Same mug. Same room. Wildly different prices.

This gap is the endowment effect — the moment you own something, you value it 2-3x more than you would if you didn't own it. It's not about the object. It's about what ownership does to your brain.