Swinging through chances

The other day, I read an article about people's behaviour in the internet. It was about how people are actually more afraid of losing something than actually more confident of gaining something. It was a very interesting article, and I was relating it to a lot of things in life that I have experienced before.

The article starts off with an experiment of how people with react on two different conditions with the same idea. In the first condition, the participants are given the chance to earn some cash, while in the second condition, the participants are given the cash, then they have the risk of losing it..... Or something like that, I can't really remember how they went, but it concludes the hypothesis that they had, where humans tend to overvalue things that they have, and undervalue things that they do not have. In another term, they prefer not to gain anything than lose something.

Makes sense, and this theory could really be used in a game of casual poker, where normal people like us play.  Maybe that's why some football teams prefer to defend till draw then try to attack. They would think that at least they are not losing, and if somehow their attack failed, and they got counter-attacked, they will lose something they already have. In a rational point of view, 3 points = win, 1 point = draw, thus 3 points should be the more sensible choice.. Or as Jose Mourinho said, it's better lose 1 game and win the next one rather than having 2 consecutive draws.. which is true ..

In life, I thing I have encountered these situations before. Maybe I was too afraid to lose any marks in negative marking tests that I did not answer some of the questions, or maybe I was too afraid to lose my hard-earned chips in poker and I folded when I should have called... 

Maybe this what makes the difference in people.. whether they are ready to make the step forward, to take a giant leap, and to dare to gain something with the risk of losing what he/she already had, with a calculated risk of course.. 

And that is why, the next time I have an equal chance of gaining/losing something with the same value, I would rather take the chance then to skip it.. Because although the feeling of losing something is really painful, the satisfaction of gaining something is much more satisfying :)