Comparative Judgments of Feelings: Loss Aversion in Non-Monetary and Monetary Evaluations

Loss aversion is a psychological phenomenon
whereby loss decisions are weighted greater than the equivalent gain decisions (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992). Recent research by McGraw, Larsen, Kahneman and Schkade (2010) revealed that the occurrence of loss aversion relies on psychological measures and scales.
Specifically, loss-aversion was present only when there was a possibility for comparing losses and gains directly (employing unipolar scales). Previous studies, however, have emphasized
the variation of choice preferences as a function of the decision content (Kusev, van Schaik, Ayton, Dent & Chater, 2009). In one experiment we studied loss aversion for judgments of feelings with non-monetary and monetary unipolar and bipolar scales. The results revealed that the mismatch between perceived and evaluated decision content (and not
comparative monetary judgments) eliminates loss aversion