&gt; if you ask people about a movie after they’ve paid $15 for it and devoted a couple of hours of their life to it, maybe they’ll have a more favorable opinion of the work. Maybe the profoundly rightward shift in Fandango’s bell curve is just a moviegoer’s version of Stockholm syndrome.<p>This is called the Endowment Effect[1]. I suspect it happens when you spend a considerable amount of time picking the &quot;right&quot; movie.<p>Admitting to yourself that you made the wrong pick is harder than consoling yourself that it wasn&#x27;t so bad after all.<p>Often times the bias will manifest itself in the subtlest of ways--for example a survey of &quot;How would you rate the movie you picked?&quot; versus &quot;How would you rate the movie?&quot; can skew ratings positively in the case of the former.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Endowment_effect" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Endowment_effect</a>