Trading makes the world go ‘round. From goods and services to stocks to intellectual property, the modern economy relies on buying and selling, but people are often reluctant to trade what they have for what they do not have, even when doing so is obxtively irrational. This phenomenon is known as the “endowment effect,” and it limits trade efficiency.

交易推动了世界的运转。从商品和服务到股票再到知识产权，现代经济依赖于买卖，但人们在没有的东西和已有的东西之间进行交易时常常会犹豫不决，即使这样做在客观上是不合理的。这种现象被称为“禀赋效应”，它限制了交易的效率。

In a new study in the journal Science Advances, Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor Michael Platt and collaborators at Zhejiang University have developed a frxwork to describe how buyers and sellers make decisions during trading.

在《科学进展》杂志的一项新研究中，宾夕法尼亚大学知识综合教授迈克尔·普拉特和浙江大学的合作者们开发了一个框架来描述买家和卖家在交易过程中是如何做出决策的。

“People often make irrational decisions, and we’re interested in understanding why,” says Platt, the senior author on the study.

“人们经常做出非理性的决定，我们有兴趣了解为什么，”普拉特说，他是该研究的高级作者。

The team also identified distinct physiological mechanisms that underlie this decision-making process. Specifically, they found lixs between the likelihood that a deal would be struck and where (and how long) the buyers and sellers focused their gaze and the degree to which their pupils were dilated. A deal was more likely to be struck when both buyers and sellers attended to potential gains rather than losses and when the pupils of both buyer and seller dilated.

团队还确定了决策过程中的不同生理机制。具体来说，他们发现达成交易的可能性与买卖双方注视的位置（以及注视的时间长短）以及他们的瞳孔扩张程度之间存在联系。当买家和卖家都关注潜在的收益而非损失，并且双方的瞳孔都扩张时，更有可能达成交易。

The underlying mechanisms behind the endowment effect are unclear, though it has been demonstrated in both real-world settings and lab studies that monitored behavior and brain activity. There are two main non-mutually exclusive theories for why the endowment effect exists. The first one is related to loss aversion — because people feel loss more keenly than gain, they are less likely to want to give up something that they already own.

禀赋效应背后的机制尚不清楚，尽管在现实世界的设置和监测行为及大脑活动的实验室研究中都已经展示了该效应。关于禀赋效应存在的原因有两大主流并不相互排斥的理论。第一个理论与损失厌恶有关——因为人们对损失的感觉比对收益更为敏感，他们不太愿意放弃已经拥有的东西。

“In trading situations, most people focus on what they might lose rather than what they might gain because our vigilance system has evolved to always be on the lookout for threats,” Platt says.

“在交易情境中，大多数人关注的是他们可能失去的东西，而不是他们可能获得的东西，因为我们的警觉系统已经进化到总是在寻找威胁，”普拉特说。
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The second theory posits that the endowment effect is caused by inertia; both sellers and buyers are reluctant to alter the status quo, so they require additional incentive — a discount, or a better premium — in order to overcome this hesitance and make a deal.

第二个理论认为，禀赋效应是由于惯性造成的；买家和卖家都不愿改变现状，因此他们需要额外的激励——一个折扣或更好的溢价——来克服这种犹豫并达成交易。

Platt’s team wanted to tease apart the relative impact of risk aversion versus inertia in determining the endowment effect’s impact on trading decisions. To do this, the researchers conducted a series of laboratory experiments to test participants’ willingness to buy and sell lottery tickets, and then monitored the participants’ gaze and pupil diameter using a video-based tracking system. They also kept track of how long the participants took to make their decisions. Then, they used this data to build a model to describe how buyers and sellers accumulate evidence.

普拉特的团队希望区分风险厌恶与惯性在决定禀赋效应对交易决策影响方面的相对影响。为此，研究人员进行了一系列实验室实验，测试参与者买卖彩票的意愿，然后使用基于视频的跟踪系统监测参与者的注视和瞳孔直径。他们还记录了参与者做出决定所需的时间。然后，他们使用这些数据来构建一个模型来描述买家和卖家如何累积证据。
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How Does the Endowment Effect Influence Buyers vs. Sellers?
As expected, the endowment effect was evident for both buyers and sellers. Buyers were slower to choose to buy than to choose not to buy, suggesting hesitancy to acquire lottery tickets at most prices, but sellers were slower to choose to sell than to choose not to sell.

禀赋效应如何影响买家与卖家？
正如预期的那样，禀赋效应对买家和卖家都是明显的。买家选择购买的速度比选择不购买的速度慢，表明大多数价格下他们在获取彩票方面有犹豫，但卖家选择出售的速度比选择不出售慢。

Sellers spent more time looking at their goods — the lottery tickets — while buyers spent more time looking at the price they’d have to pay. However, sellers spent more time looking at their lottery tickets than buyers spent eying prices, suggesting that loss aversion plays a bigger role in the endowment effect for sellers than buyers.

卖家花更多时间观察他们的商品——彩票，而买家则花更多时间观察他们需要支付的价格。然而，卖家花在彩票上的时间比买家花在看价格上的时间更长，这表明对卖家而言，损失厌恶在禀赋效应中的作用大于买家。

“When you look at something, it amplifies the importance of that obxt or information in the brain,” Platt says. “And because people tend to look more at information they value more, there’s a feedback loop; the more you look at something, the more you value it and vice versa.”

“当你注视某物时，它会在大脑中放大那个物体或信息的重要性，”普拉特说。“而且因为人们倾向于更多地注视他们更看重的信息，这里有一个反馈循环；你越是注视某物，就越是看重它，反之亦然。”

The parties were most likely to agree to a deal when both attended to their potential gains, that is, when the seller focused on the price and the buyer focused on the lottery ticket.

当双方都关注他们的潜在收益时，也就是卖家关注价格而买家关注彩票时，最有可能达成交易。

The researchers also noted that the sellers’ pupils tended to dilate when they agreed to sell, and buyers’ pupils dilated when they agreed to buy such that synchronized pupil dilation could be used to forecast successful deals.

研究人员还注意到，当卖家同意出售时，他们的瞳孔倾向于扩张，而当买家同意购买时，买家的瞳孔扩张，因此同步的瞳孔扩张可以用来预测成功的交易。

While gaze, as a function of attention, may be a factor in guiding trader’s decisions, the researchers suspect that pupil dilation is an indicator of an underlying physiological mechanism rather than a causal factor. People’s pupils dilate to adapt to low-light situations, but they also dilate during physiological arousal, when norepinephrine, also known as adrenaline, is released, as can happen during moments of increased mental effort.

虽然注视作为注意力的一种功能可能是引导交易者决策的一个因素，研究人员怀疑瞳孔扩张是一个潜在生理机制的指标，而不是一个因果因素。人的瞳孔会在光线不足的情况下扩张，但在生理唤醒期间，当释放去甲肾上腺素（也称为肾上腺素）时，也会发生瞳孔扩张，这可能发生在心智努力增加的时刻。

WHAT IS THE ENDOWMENT EFFECT?
The endowment effect is a cognitive bias where people tend to value obxts they own more than obxts they don’t. Coined by economist Richard Thaler in 1980, the term describes how emotional attachment can change an obxt’s worth.

什么是禀赋效应？
禀赋效应是一种认知偏差，人们倾向于比不拥有的物品更看重自己拥有的物品。该术语由经济学家理查德·塞勒在1980年提出，它描述了情感依附是如何改变一个物体的价值。

“People have to accumulate more evidence before they will make a decision to change the status quo, and this takes more mental effort,” Platt says. “All else being equal, your pupils open up when you’re about to do something unexpected or surprising.”

“人们需要累积更多的证据才会做出改变现状的决定，这需要更多的心智努力，”普拉特说。“在所有其他条件相同的情况下，当你即将做出意想不到或惊人的事情时，你的瞳孔会张开。”

Though the researchers didn’t manipulate the participants’ gaze in this study, previous research has shown that trading decisions can be manipulated by making certain elements more visual and thereby attracting the buyer or seller’s gaze.

尽管研究者在这项研究中没有操纵参与者的注视，但之前的研究表明，通过使某些元素更加可视化从而吸引买家或卖家的注视，可以操纵交易决策。
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“By making the price bigger, brighter, or more colorful, without actually changing its monetary value, you can actually increase the likelihood that someone will accept a deal, just by making them spend more time looking at the price,” Platt says.

“通过使价格更大、更亮或更多彩，而不实际改变其货币价值，你实际上可以增加某人接受交易的可能性，只是通过让他们花更多时间注视价格，”普拉特说。

These findings could guide interventions to improve the efficiency of free markets by mitigating the endowment effect. They could also have implications for consumer protection since it’s relatively easy for software to monitor where people are looking and for how long.

这些发现可以指导干预措施以提高自由市场的效率，通过减轻禀赋效应。它们也可能对消费者保护有影响，因为软件监控人们看什么以及看多久相对容易。

The study also teaches something interesting about the biological mechanisms behind how we make decisions. “The way our decision-making process is yoked to attention is not uniquely human,” Platt says. “It doesn’t have anything to do with what we’ve learnt or our culture; it emerges from biology and the way our brains are wired.”

该研究还揭示了我们做出决策背后的生物机制有趣的一面。“我们的决策过程与注意力的紧密联系并不是人类独有的，”普拉特说。“它与我们所学习的或我们的文化无关；它源于生物学和我们大脑的连接方式。”

Michael Platt is a Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor; the James S. Riepe University Professor; and professor of neuroscience, of psychology, and of marketing, with appointments in the Perelman School of Medicine, School of Arts & Sciences, and Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

迈克尔·普拉特是宾夕法尼亚大学整合知识大学教授、詹姆斯·S·瑞普大学教授，同时也是神经科学、心理学和市场营销教授，他在宾夕法尼亚大学的佩雷尔曼医学院、文理学院以及沃顿商学院都有任职。

Other authors of the paper are Zhejiang University’s Zexian Liang, Ruining Wang, and xiaoyi Wang; and Feng Sheng, a visiting fellow of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative.

论文的其他作者包括浙江大学的梁泽贤、王瑞宁和王晓义；以及沃顿神经科学倡议的访问学者冯胜。

Funding came from the National Science Foundation of China (grants 32200883, 72072161, and R01MH108627), STI 2030 major projects (grant 2021ZD0200409), Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities of China, MOE Frontiers Science Center for Brain Science & Brain-Machine Integration at Zhejiang University, and a gift to the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative from M. M. and F. S. Lefkort.

资金来源于中国国家自然科学基金（项目编号32200883、72072161和R01MH108627）、科技创新2030重大项目（项目编号2021ZD0200409）、中国中央高校基本科研业务费、浙江大学脑科学与脑机融合前沿科学中心，以及M. M.和F. S. Lefkort对沃顿神经科学倡议的捐赠。

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