Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for his work on cognitive biases. Those are little hardwired shortcuts in our brains that help speed up decision-making. They’re usually helpful but not always rational. One example is loss aversion. Rationally, gaining a dollar should be as pleasurable as losing a dollar is painful. But that’s not how our minds work. Losing a dollar bothers us a lot more than earning a dollar makes us feel good. It makes sense; losing too much can mean death but gaining a lot . . . well, it’s nice but quickly results in diminishing returns. So evolution has wired us to fear
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Never Split the difference
