Thinking, Fast and Slow · Daniel Kahneman

The endowment effect examples

Curated by · reviewed 2026-06-01

The endowment effect is how simply owning something makes you value it more than you would if you didn't own it. Examples:

What is the endowment effect? Read the full idea →

5 examples of the endowment effect

  1. Selling your old car

    You price it well above what any buyer — or even you — would actually pay for it.

  2. The free-trial trap

    Once the subscription feels like yours, giving it up feels like a loss, so you keep paying.

  3. The mug study

    People given a mug demanded about twice as much to sell it as others would pay to buy one.

  4. Cluttered closets

    You can't part with things you'd never buy today — but they're already yours.

  5. Trade-in lowballs

    Your trade-in feels worth far more to you than the dealer's offer, every time.

How to spot it in yourself

You'll forget most of this by next week.

That's just how memory works. Lock the endowment effect in with a 5-minute active-recall session — spaced repetition, no signup.

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