Selling creates a loss while buying generates a gain: Capturing the implicit irrational bias by the IAT method

The endowment effect is the tendency for a person to demand more in return for selling an object than he or she would be willing to pay for the same product. Thaler suggested that the reason of endowment effect lies in that selling creates a loss while buying generates a gain. Although prior research has demonstrated the existence of loss aversion, few researchers have focused on the connection between “selling vs. buying” and “losing vs. gaining”, and a recent research with a self-report method failed to find solid evidence for such a connection. The present research applied the implicit association test, a latency method, to confirm this connection. The results demonstrated that selling was more closely connected to losing while buying was more closely connected to gaining. Thus the bias resulting from loss aversion and gain preference was confirmed to be the underlying mechanism of the endowment effect. The previous failure to find such an association may be due to the insensitivity of the self-report method. Here the implication of the findings and method for experimental economic psychology is discussed.