Gratitude-Based Solution for Endowment Effect
In this very first post, I would not write ‘Hello World’. I would like to share an idea on how to avoid losing rationality due to endowment effect without taking things for granted. Since I have mentioned ‘gratitude’ in the title, this story mostly explains my philosophy of gratitude.
Endowment Effect
I was reading The Art of Thinking Clearly (Rolf Dobelli: 2013)when suddenly I found sort of spiritual advice in one of its chapters which explains the endowment effect. Endowment effect is basically a hypothesis stating that people may overvalue stuff that they have, simply because they are emotionally attached to this stuff. After describing some illustration of this effect, the chapter is closed with this conclusion:
In conclusion: Don’t cling to things. Consider your property something that the “universe” (whatever you believe this to be)has bestowed to you temporarily. Keep in mind that it can recoup this (or more) in the blink of an eye.
For me, it’s quite interesting to see a ‘spiritual’ advice is given in order to maintain our ‘rationality’ which can be disturbed by our ‘emotional’ attachment. So, I posted the excerpt of the advice on my Instagram.
‘Property’
And then, Emir, a friend of mine commented:
Does property include things like friendship, love, or sanity? Without the spirit of posession [sic] or belonging, can we truly love things? Isn’t it creates distance of attachment, as we knew it’s only temporary? :p I think we should cling to things. We just need to be wise enough to set priority on things that we should hold on or the others that we should let it go
In my opinion, to answer the first question, ‘property’ includes those things. There are times when we value our friendship too high that it leads to sacrificing something more important. For example, sometimes we betray the truth so that we can be loyal to our friend. Later on, we may realize this is merely irrationality.
It also happens the same to family matters. I heard many stories where parents do not really know how their children really are and complaining to the schoolteacher when the schoolteacher tells them their kids are a troublemaker at school. They simply forget the schoolteacher may know something that they do not know because the schoolteacher watches their kids during the school day. Just because he is your son, it does not mean he is a good kid. The similar endowment effect is taking place here.
I believe the term ‘property’ can be anything and everything. We tend to overvalue our ideas, our capability, and even our so called ‘love’. Why does a man think he deserves the girl in his dream? It’s probably because he overvalues his love. I know some girl decided to break up with her boyfriend because she wants ‘more love’. The boy thinks he has given his ‘so valuable love’ while the girl thinks he always takes her for granted.
The last sentence seems to connect with Emir’s next question. How can we truly love things if we don’t get attached to it?
Gratitude Solution
For me, true love does not equal to blind love. True love is a proportional love that is based on the sense of gratitude instead of the sense of belonging. Truly loving someone or something does not imply losing our rationality. True love means we can act wisely and responsibly. It does not necessarily mean we must have priority which to hold on or let go (which means we can have things that we hold on forever), but it means we know when is the time to hold on or let go. Because, essentially, everything we own, we own it only temporarily. Even if we have invested so much on something, it’s possible that we would need to let it go for a greater good.
In my interpretation of gratitude, we must not cling to things but we must realize we own everything that we own for a reason. We must see it as a mandate from God. So, we have to be responsible to it and stay rational in making decision. We also need to be ready to leave or lose what we have, even if our world may seem strange without its presence. We have to employ anything that we own for a good deed. For in the end, in my personal belief, we may hold responsible for these mandates.
In conclusion, we should not cling to things in the belonging-framework. We should follow the gratitude-framework. Everything is bestowed upon us temporarily, and we have to use it wisely during this pseudo-possession period. Although intuitively the difference may look so subtle, the two frameworks are significantly different.
Now, I want to translate this philosophy into a few cases that I mentioned in the previous section.
On friendship: Don’t be afraid to give advice or to tell your friend’s drawback, if it is for a good purpose. Although initially it seems like a betrayal, it is the way a genuine relationship being made.
On parenting: Don’t blindly love your kids, sometimes you need to give it a tough love as a rational response in order to educate them properly.
On relationship: Don’t be afraid to ask how can you love your significant other more. The love that you give might be insufficient although you feel like giving all you have got. But, you know, communication is one of the most important parts in relationship after all.
Of course, you can translate this philosophy/framework with regard to a specific issue in your life. These are just examples.
I think that is all for the first post. Hello World!
