Attachment or Ownership: Reference Point Shifts and an Experimental Test of Attachment

This paper suggests a hypothesis that feelings of attachment change subjective valuation through reference point shifts. This attachment hypothesis can explain seemingly contradictory results of recent experiments concerning what are called endowment effects, in which there exists disparities of valuation between owners and nonowners. That is, individuals who are attached to a good value it highly. We propose a model of value function that illustrates the attachment hypothesis. In this model, feelings of attachment shift the reference point. In addition, we test the effect of attachment on subjective valuation by experimentally controlling attachment, using a psychological method called priming manipulation.