Loss aversion is not supported by the evidence
This article is essentially a press release for the author&#x27;s own paper: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;jcpy.1047" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;jcpy.1047</a><p>Which itself is a part of a series of articles in JCP debating the issue: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;jcpy.1054" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;onlinelibrary.wiley.com&#x2F;doi&#x2F;abs&#x2F;10.1002&#x2F;jcpy.1054</a><p>The definitive statement made by this article&#x27;s headline isn&#x27;t really supported by the evidence presented in the papers. Rather, the state of affairs seems to be that &quot;loss aversion&quot; has been the victim of incessant overgeneralisation. It&#x27;s a very simple hypothesis about human behaviour that plays nicely into a lot of interesting (and therefore publishable) narratives. This has lead people to blindly accept the general hypothesis of loss aversion without enough critical investigation of its manifestation. The authors don&#x27;t really refute &quot;loss aversion&quot; (i.e. they don&#x27;t present an alternative theory to explain the papers that purport to demonstrate &quot;loss aversion&quot;), but rather they refute the pop-psychology belief that it&#x27;s a general principle of human behaviour.