Reaction Case

In "Our Brains Know Why We Do What We Do", Samuel M.McClure(2011)discusses several heuristics and theories that may explain the regular pattern of decision making and the problems they have.One thing that the author says is "We tend to be loss-averse,meaning that losses loom larger in our imaginations than do equivalent gains."(Samuel,2011). I totally agree with his point because it reminds me of a phrase that I read in another article"To Err Is Primate":"Reference point"(Laurie,2011). Our decisions can be greatly changed when we change our reference point.One example is a phenomenon that happens all the time when I go shopping.I would seldom buy things which i think it's expensive, but a lot of times I would buy an item if the seller told me I would get several percents off, even if the item was still more expensive than it should be .The main reason is that if I think about how much I should pay for it, It felt like I would lose a lot of money. On the contrary, when I care about how much I could save buying the item because of the discount,I felt I have made a great deal, totally ignoring how much I truly spent on it. That kind of tendency have made me bought a lot of things that they are not worth for. However, I'm not the only one with that problem.People would spontaneously magnify the negative points when making a decision because they are fear of losing,and be more optimistic when we looking at the positive part of the problem.In a word, the loss-aversion and reference point can both greatly influence people's judgment and sometimes lead to bad decisions.