The only thing that prevents us from reaching our limits is our own thoughts. We are our own worst enemies.
Usually the process is figuratively represented as a leisurely climb up the stairs, step by step. In fact, it consists of jumps and is more like jumping between floors on a trampoline. In my life, such jumps occur due to changes in the very way of thinking: I look back and evaluate the whole picture as a whole, I change my attitude towards something. By the way, such moments happen infrequently, they are scattered over time.
To cope with the flow of information and external stimuli falling on our brain, we unconsciously begin to think in a pattern and use heuristic, intuitive methods of solving problems.
Writer Ash Read likened heuristics to a bike path for the mind, allowing it to work without having to maneuver between cars and without the risk of getting hit. Unfortunately, most of the things that we think we take completely deliberately are actually taken unconsciously.
The big problem is that we think according to heuristic patterns when faced with important choices. Although in this situation, on the contrary, deep reflection is necessary.
The most harmful heuristics are those that prevent us from seeing the path to change. They change our perception of reality and push us up the long stairs when we need a springboard. We offer you a list of five cognitive biases that are killing your resolve. Overcoming them is the first step towards change.
1. Confirmation bias
pressmaster/depositphotos.comOnly in an ideal world are all our thoughts rational, logical, and unbiased. In fact, most of us believe what we want to believe.
You can call it stubbornness, but psychologists have another term for this phenomenon - "confirmation bias". This is the tendency to seek and interpret information in a way that supports an idea that is close to you.
Let's take an example. In the 60s, Dr. Peter Wason conducted an experiment in which subjects were shown three numbers and asked to guess a rule known to the experimenter that explained this sequence. These were the numbers 2, 4, 6, so the subjects often suggested the rule "every next number increases by two." To confirm the rule, they offered their sequences of numbers, for example, 6, 8, 10 or 31, 33, 35. Is everything right?
Not really. Only one in five subjects guessed the real rule: three numbers in ascending order. Typically, Wason's students came up with a false idea (adding two each time) and then only searched in that direction to get evidence to support their guess.
Despite its apparent simplicity, Wason's experiment says a lot about human nature: we tend to look only for information that confirms our beliefs, not information that refutes them.
Confirmation bias is inherent in everyone, including doctors, politicians, creative people and entrepreneurs, even when the cost of error is especially high. Instead of asking ourselves what we are doing and why (this is the most important question), we often fall into bias and rely too much on the initial judgment.
2. Anchor effect
The first decision is not always the best, but our mind clings to the initial information that literally takes over.
The anchoring effect, or anchoring effect, is the tendency to greatly overestimate the first impression (anchor information) at the time of making a decision. This is clearly manifested when evaluating numerical values: the estimate tends towards the initial approximation. Simply put, we always think in relation to something, and not objectively.
Research shows that anything can be explained by the anchor effect, from why you don't get what you want (if you initially ask for more, the final figure will be high, and vice versa) to why you believe in stereotypes about people. whom you see for the first time in your life.
Revealing is a study by psychologists Mussweiler and Strack, who have shown that the anchoring effect works even with initially implausible numbers. The participants in their experiment, divided into two groups, were asked how old Mahatma Gandhi was when he died. And at the beginning, as anchors, each group was asked an additional question. The first: “Did he die before the age of nine or after?”, And the second: “Did this happen before he reached 140 years of age or after?”. As a result, the first group assumed that Gandhi died at 50, and the second - at 67 (in fact, he died at the age of 87).
The anchor question with the number 9 led the first group to give a significantly lower number than the second group, which started from an intentionally high number.
It is extremely important to understand the significance of the initial information (whether it is plausible or not) before making a final decision. After all, the first information we learn about something will affect how we will relate to it in the future.
3. Effect of joining the majority
chaoss/depositphotos.com The choice of the majority directly affects our thinking, even if it is contrary to our personal beliefs. This effect is known as herd instinct. You have probably heard sayings like “You don’t go to a foreign monastery with your charter” or “In Rome, act like a Roman” - this is precisely the effect of joining.
This distortion can lead us to make bad decisions (like going to a bad but popular movie or eating at a questionable place). At worst, it leads to groupthink.
Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs in a group of people, within which conformity or the desire for social harmony leads to the fact that all alternative opinions are suppressed.
As a result, the group isolates itself from external influences. It becomes dangerous to suddenly disagree, and we begin to be our own censors. And as a result, we lose our own and independent thinking.
4 Survivor's Mistake
We often go to the other extreme: we focus exclusively on the stories of people who have achieved success. We are inspired by the success of Michael Jordan, not Kwame Brown or Jonathan Bender. We glorify Steve Jobs and forget Gary Kildall.
The problem with this effect is that we are focusing on the 0.0001% of successful people, not the majority. This leads to a one-sided assessment of the situation.
For example, we may think that being an entrepreneur is easy because only successful people publish books about their business. But we don't know anything about those who failed. This is probably why all sorts of online gurus and experts who promise to open “the only way to success” have become so popular. You just need to remember that the path that worked once will not necessarily lead you to the same result.
5. Loss aversion
Once we have made a choice and are on our way, other cognitive distortions come into play. Probably the worst of these is loss aversion, or the possession effect.
The loss aversion effect was popularized by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who found that we prefer to avoid even a small loss rather than focusing on the benefits we can reap.
The fear of a small loss can keep a person from participating in the game, even if a fabulous win is possible. Kahneman and Tversky conducted an experiment with the most ordinary mug. People who didn't have it were willing to pay about $3.30 for it, and those who did have it were willing to part with it for only $7.
Think about how this effect might affect you if you. Are you afraid to think outside the box for fear of losing something? Does the fear outweigh what you can gain?
So, there is a problem. Where is the solution?
All cognitive distortions have one thing in common: they arise from an unwillingness to take a step back and look at the whole picture.
We prefer to work with something familiar and do not want to look for miscalculations in our plans. Positive thinking has its benefits. But if important decisions are made blindly, you are unlikely to make the best choice possible.
Before making a big decision, make sure you don't fall prey to cognitive biases. To do this, take a step back and ask yourself:
- Why do you think it is necessary to do so?
- Are there any counterarguments to your opinion? Are they wealthy?
- Who influences your beliefs?
- Do you follow other people's opinions because you really believe in them?
- What do you have to lose if you make this decision? What will you get?
There are literally hundreds of different cognitive distortions, and without them, our brain simply could not function. But, if you do not analyze why you think this way and not otherwise, it is easy to fall into stereotyped thinking and forget how to think on your own.
Personal growth is never easy. It is a difficult job to which one must dedicate oneself. Don't let your future suffer just because not thinking is easier.
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To increase sales growth, psychological techniques can be used to help create the illusion of choice, distorting reality. Emotions play an important role. They justify the techniques aimed at playing with the human subconscious. They are often encountered in life and are no longer perceived as programming for certain actions.
Consider marketing tricks that have a positive effect on customers and have an effect on business growth.
Loss avoidance effect
Losses for people have always caused negative emotions, their power is so great that, compared with the acquisition of something, people are more worried about the loss. The joy of the acquisition is not so strong, especially if any item was bought in case of need (a hat in windy weather in a random store). Emotions may be absent altogether.
But no one likes to lose something. If there is an opportunity to win 500 rubles and a person does not win, he will be upset, but not so much if he loses the 500 rubles that he had in his hands.
You have won money - immediately take it!
Therefore, they came up with a rule based on emotions from the loss of benefits.
H a person experiences emotions of the same strength when losing a sum of money, as when receiving a double win. When we lose something, we get more angry than we enjoy gaining something.
When working with a customer base and implementing e-mail marketing into work, you need to pay attention to the effect of losses. Write to clients what benefits they will miss, what they will not receive if they do not use this product. It is important to speak the language of the client, but sometimes play a game with his subconscious, pushing him to take action because of the fear of losing or missing out on something important.
Seopult offers to try their automated advertising system, which includes: search engine promotion, contextual advertising, content marketing for free for a certain period.
The company regularly holds free webinars, seminars and CyberMarketing conferences at the Mail.Ru Group office in Moscow.
November 11, 2017 will be a big conference that will bring together a lot of people.
Content Marketing Conference CyberMarketing17 Participation fee: 
Having become acquainted with the company's products for free, there is a possibility that a person will want to continue using the system, but on a paid basis. Here's the loss avoidance effect in action.
The well-known company Adobe also offers to use its products for free for 1 month. Some free versions of programs have limited functionality, they offer to buy a full version with more features.
Adobe Products The company offers customers 4 tariff plans. To test the service in action, a free tariff has been developed with no access to applications, with limited functionality, there is no way to select and cluster requests.
Megaindex company and its products Sometimes a free product is no different from a paid product, only it is allowed to use its limited access. Even in programs that are downloaded, there is a trial period and after it the program does not work.
Think about anti-virus applications.
I use Avast in the paid version and buy new keys every year. The Free version of Avast also exists. Additional features that constantly appear in the company are available in other paid licenses.
Avast antivirus with additional features The online service also offers customers to experience the possibilities of the program for free. And in 2016, the company gave to the account from 100 rubles to try out all the paid functionality in action.
For this amount, you can open a project, create several text tasks, connect copywriters to work, providing them with guest access.
The company also gave the right to update the budget for 100 rubles three times.
Social effect
The social effect is fully manifested when a person chooses a product based on fashion or necessity. Even if the brain will give signals to something that it does not like, in fact it may not be so. People are deceived in tastes, based on unpleasant situations with any branded product. The brain remembers this, but it will still like the product.
It is interesting what contributes to the creation of emotional bonds with branded goods and services.
- Hostages are people who cannot refuse to buy some product, such as gasoline or toilet paper. As long as they are hostages of products, they will not focus on manufacturers, choose who is better.
- Fans - when the buyer decides to buy a product that is not very important to him and is not a first necessity, for example, an iPhone 10. He made a choice in favor of it and decided to spend money on it.
Hostages of programs for uniqueness, for checking the nausea of texts, for checking for (Glavred). If ever these programs become paid, then some will have a desire not to refuse them.
A popular online service is text.ru. You have to pay for batch checking of texts in the program.
Text uniqueness checker For optimizers, a popular service will be Topvisor, which helps track the position of the site in the search. This online service has long become a social necessity for SEOs, internet marketers and web analysts.
Popular resource Topvisor
A striking example of a technique is comparing numbers with each other (in this case, prices), where one of the prices will act as an anchor for the rest.
Let's talk about a social experiment, how the anchor effect manifests itself.
For example, we gather a group of people (about a hundred people) and ask them to answer 2 questions:
- What are the last three digits in your phone number?
- How many crackers are in one package?
At first glance, two different and unrelated questions. After such an experiment, you can see the connection. People who had large numbers in their phone number significantly exaggerated the number of crackers in the pack. The digits of the number served as an anchor for them.
Another good example is the experiment of Amos Tversk and Daniel Kahneman. In front of the people who participated in the experiment, they placed an object that looked like a roulette wheel. The experiment involved two groups of people. Roulette starts. For some, it stops at the number 75, while for others it stops at 15. They are asked to answer two questions (the values \u200b\u200bfor each group are different):
- Are less or more than 15 (75) percent of African countries members of the United Nations?
- How much do you think this percentage is?
The first group answered - 45 percent, and the second - 25. Each of them had its own reference point, the anchor effect.
If you decide on the price, then you never need to indicate the minimum amount, it is better to exaggerate.
How does it work in an online store? With the help of this technique, some logic of sorting goods is contested.
Let's see how?
For example, we find an online store that deals with electronic equipment. We find and go to the section of laptops. The first five prices for a product, for example, are: 21,400 rubles, 19,000 rubles, 21,400 rubles, 21,400 rubles and 21,400 rubles. In this price range, a laptop for 19,000 rubles will naturally attract the attention of a buyer, since the price of 21,400 will not seem profitable for a buyer.
But if the price range is: 23,000 rubles, 19,400 rubles, 21,400 rubles and 19,400 rubles, then the price of a laptop for 21,500 will no longer look overpriced.
Almost all Internet sites use this technique. To improve the effect, they can add additional bonuses.
Thus, they increase their average check.
The price should always be slightly increased The anchor effect is also used in cross-selling (using an existing relationship with a client in order to sell him an additional product or service).
Distorting perception of choice
The principle of operation of the reception is a frivolous choice of buyers. We do not always make a deliberate choice, you can play on this.
For example, the buyer made an unfortunate choice and bought some products, at that time he considered that this was the right thing to do. In the future, he will come to you again, it will become a kind of habit. I bought once, I will buy a second. Agree, it's not bad when the buyer has a habit of buying your products.
Many scientific experiments have been carried out to confirm this effect. A striking example was the choice of a used car. All participants in the experiment received complete information (features and options) about two different car models and were given time to think and choose one of them.
After some time, the participants were gathered again and reminded which car they chose. They were again provided with information, but only different. The experimenters changed the positive and negative aspects of the machines and again offered to choose one of the options. 98% of the participants made the same choice as the first time.
For example, we buy a laptop. We have a large number of models in front of us. After evaluating all the positive and negative points, we stop at a particular model. Having bought it, we will immediately begin to review our choice and convince ourselves that the chosen model is better than the rest.
Human psychology is designed in such a way that he will always claim that his choice is right and defend him if he was wrong.
Many different tricks that work with our subconscious. And all of them can be used every day to promote your business. You can also read the article about 
The game can be developed under the influence of various fields of science. Among them, the field of psychology is one of the most interesting, as it offers options for player interactions that may not be provided for by the main mechanics of the game. This week I'm publishing my take on loss avoidance, which I hope will grow into a series on psychology.
I found one of the best discussions of loss avoidance on Usabilia, where the term is described as follows:
“Loss avoidance is a human characteristic that describes how people are inherently afraid of losing something. By comparison, people experience much more grief from defeat than joy from victory. At the same time, the value of the loss is greatly exaggerated compared to the benefit, even if the cost in monetary terms is the same.
The question of the essence of the phenomenon of loss avoidance is raised infrequently. Instead, modern scientific papers on the topic tend to focus more on why it happens and what its limits are. I think some of these questions might be interesting for future articles, but for now I want to focus on loss avoidance as it relates to game design.
It just so happens that two different game developers have recreated and replicated the loss avoidance effect well in their projects. Therefore, their games are a great example of how this psychological effect can be used to improve the gaming experience. And it just so happens that these two are some of my favorite game developers: Rainer Knizia and Stefan Feld.
Loss Avoidance Basics
Ra (1999) by Rainer Knizia is a game that always makes me think about the fear of losing victory points. The main objective of the game is to collect tiles, and these tiles will generally give you victory points when placing your civilization's monuments, pharaohs, floodplains, and technologies. Most often, you get victory points, but there are two exceptions: if you have the fewest pharaohs, you lose 2 points, and if you do not have civilization technologies at the end of the age, you lose 5 points.
As an example of a very well designed auction game, tiles are priced based on demand. However, in most or all games of Ra that I've played, civilization tiles tend to be overpriced: people will pay more for them than it's worth to get 5 points, which is understandable since they're afraid of losing victory points. . I suspect that in Ra - Dice Game (2009) the importance of civilization technologies implemented through dice is also overestimated, but it's hard to understand exactly how much, because in Ra everything is considered a little differently. (This is likely another topic for a future conversation.)
Pharaohs, which can result in a 2-point penalty, are even more interesting than civilization technologies. I'm sure the average player overestimates their importance in the same way, even if he is not the last one in terms of the number of these tiles. However, loss avoidance tends to fade as you gain experience in the game. The same trend can be seen in many other games.
Let's announce Shannon's first law of loss avoidance game design:
More experienced players are easier to deal with losses.
Age of Crisis
In the late 00s, games with elements of crisis appeared on the market. The best known in this category is Agricola (2007), but I believe that Stefan Feld is the consummate master of this genre.
The main idea of such a game is that penalties and losses are put in the forefront, making them a constant factor in the gameplay. Due to the phenomenon of loss avoidance, the tension in such games increases, and this in itself stimulates making certain decisions, which is not always for the best.
Notre Dame (2007) was Feld's first game in this category. There are many options in the game, including card drafting and resource management, but there is also an element of crisis: each round, each player adds a certain number of rats to his plague track, and the only way to reduce their number is by building hospitals.
An interesting thing about Notre Dame is that novice players often try their best to keep the plague track from increasing, even though it has no effect until it reaches the last value. Experienced players are (again) a bit more comfortable with increasing the value on their plague track, but even they don't tend to play as efficiently as possible without thinking they'd end up near the end of that track by the end of the game. This is because, again, they are afraid of accidental losses, which is possible with an unsuccessful drop of cards at the end of the turn.
Players try to avoid not only losses as such, but also an increase in the likelihood of losses in the future.
In the Year of the Dragon (2007) by Stefan Feld may be the nastiest, crisis-filled game of all. Every round something terrible happens: an epidemic kills people if there are not enough healers; the Mongols kill people if there are not enough warriors; the emperor takes people if taxes are not paid; drought kills people if palaces are not supplied with rice. It's a constant streak of bad luck that players struggle to keep up with, and surprisingly, it doesn't exhaust their fear of loss. (Although this may exhaust the patience of the players!)
And in the midst of all this disgrace, the “Dragon Festival” suddenly begins. This is a good event that can bring a lot of victory points to players who provide firework tiles, but this is always less of a concern for players than the remaining time until the end of the game.
Even in a game oversaturated with penalties, players tend to worry more about possible losses than about bonuses that are barely noticeable against the backdrop of a general crisis.
Costs and consequences
Rainer Knizia focused entirely on the phenomenon of loss avoidance, I think, in the 90s, and now let's look at another game of that era - Medici (1995), as an example of another interesting use case for loss avoidance.
In Medici, players place money bets to purchase a large number of goods, which in turn can bring them money, although the profit made is not always obvious. The catch is that the money you spend is your victory points.
The game assumes that spending VP will cause some loss avoidance effect, although probably not on the same scale as VP loss in other game mechanics (like rats or no civilization tiles). However, newbies seem to be more reluctant to spend their VP than more experienced players.
Spending can sometimes lead to a loss avoidance effect, although to a lesser degree than if something were actually lost.
Interestingly, Medici offers a good argument against wasting VP. You start with 30-40 florins and if you get to 0... then you won't have any more money to bid. So there are real consequences to overspending.
Sometimes the game can offer a powerful argument that will help avoid losses.
Conclusion
Obviously, the topic of loss avoidance in games can use some real world research to better assess how applicable this phenomenon is, and what type of behavior it generates, to what extent, and for what type of players. Also I think it would be interesting to mathematically analyze how certain mechanics affect the difference between loss and gain. However, for now, I think it's fair to sum it up - designing with loss aversion in mind can work well in a game, presenting players with dilemmas that are outside of the game itself, in basic problems of human psychology.
Along with gender and race, age is a basic human characteristic by social definition. But, unlike them, the more we get older, the less we like it. Old age in our society is considered a negative characteristic. Stereotypes and expectations about old age refer to the loss of physical, mental and social capabilities.
From the psychology of decision-making, we know that we are extremely sensitive to losses, and we try to avoid them more than we try to gain something (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). And empirical research shows that as we age, we normally motivate ourselves more and more to take actions that preserve our functionality and prevent its loss. In addition, we tend to have a positive image of ourselves, because otherwise life is very difficult. And when the surrounding world screams from all sides to a person about his age, pointing to the ever-growing limitation and inferiority every year, a person naturally tries to avoid this. And for this we have our own methods and strategies. The simplest is comparison. A person with pleasure compares himself with peers who look worse, and “is convinced” that he is much better and younger than his peers. This allows him to move to a younger age group.
A recent experiment by Swiss scientists investigated just such characteristics of behavior (Weiss & Freund, 2012). 78 elderly people, aged 65 to 83 years, 68% of women, were divided into three groups, depending on the information they were given as independent variable. They were given a test with questions like “The chance of developing dementia increases from the age of 60, increasing every 5 years. How many people aged 90 and over have dementia? A) one third B) one half C) one fifth An example is from the group receiving negative information, while in other groups questions of a positive or neutral nature were given. The very nature of the submission of questions was made in such a way that the participants were not aware of such a manipulation of their consciousness.
Then slides were shown to everyone on the computer monitor, on each 2 photographs - one of an old person, the other of a middle age. The slide was shown for 500 milliseconds, and the participants were asked to look at it in the same way as they look at, for example, a magazine. Information about the movement and fixation of the eyes was recorded by an eye-tracker.
And here's what turned out:
- Negative information affected people more than neutral or positive information.
- People reacted negatively to their age when they were reminded of the bad consequences of aging.
- And this information was reflected in the movements and fixations of the eyes - the more a person was reminded of the negative consequences of age, the more he preferred and longer looked at younger faces.
This defensive behavior thus works as follows: contrasting oneself with peers or older people in order to confirm large positive differences in oneself, and preferring a younger age group, looking for and finding similarities with it.
Since the impact was subconscious, and eye movements are also not a particularly conscious process, we are dealing with a subconscious protective function. I think that his role is not only in creating a positive image of himself, which is created by such a strategy, of course, but there must be something else, even more valuable, I hope. But what it can be, how significant it is and how to measure it - this is interesting and needs to be clarified.
By the way, the correct answer to the question about dementia is: a).
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: Analysis of decisions under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263–291. doi:10.2307/1914185.
Weiss, D., & Freund, A. M. (2012). Still young at heart: Negative age-related information motivates distancing from same-aged people. . Psychology and Aging, 27(1), 173-180.
Lingualeo Product Development Vice President Artyom Loginov on how to use perceptual features to increase sales.
A good product manager should:
- First, study your audience (there are many different methods for this).
- Understand what most users need.
- Design how everything should work so that the problem of users is solved in the most convenient and high-quality manner, without forgetting about the interests of the company (earn money, encourage them to bring their friends to the product, collect useful data from users, etc.).
All problems usually begin in the third paragraph. Inexperienced product managers begin to rely either on their own idea of beauty, or on the opinion of their inner circle, or ask a dozen random users. Some begin to invent "personas".
In my opinion, all this does not work.
But if you figure out how the human brain reacts to different interface elements, why the brain “orders” us to open and view the conditional Instagram, why and at what moment the brain wants to close the application, and so on, it becomes clear how to design a good product for the selected audience .
A few years ago, an IT department was formed at Brain Science, where the guys from the Valley began to study the reaction of the brain to all sorts of things in mobile applications. Marketers got their bearings first, “pulled out” ideas from there and called it neuromarketing.
Now he is everywhere, the most fashionable topic. And most product managers and designers are still slow, although for them there is just the most useful information. And for monetization specialists too, but they have already begun to slowly study this topic.
A special fashionable term “neuroeconomics” has appeared. It explains how our brain decides whether or not to buy something in an app, what people are more willing to pay for, and why.
Let me give you an example with one of my favorite chips - “Loss Avoidance”. The human brain is so arranged that it rejoices in gaining money or some kind of reward. But when he loses the same amount of money or misses the opportunity to receive a reward, he becomes much more upset.
Bell Cooper's book describes an interesting situation on this topic: one professor conducted an experiment on two groups of students. He offered the first group to do additional homework. For their implementation, the student received an additional point. After earning 5 points, you can not take the exam. For the second group, he changed the formulation of the problem: from the very beginning, the entire group was exempted from the final exam. But those who did not solve a single additional homework assignment during the semester lost the right not to take the final exam.
In the first grade, 43% of students eventually earned 5 points and got the right not to take the exam. In the second grade there were 82% of such students. The difference is that we hate to lose what we think we already own. Many promotions in games work on the same principle: the user is offered a tournament or promotion, the fulfillment of which will bring an additional prize (resources, internal currency, the ability to unlock a new hero, abilities or items).
The promotion usually has a limited duration - from several hours to several weeks (depending on the type of game). Many users during this period increase their activity in the game for fear of missing out on profits. The brain tries to avoid loss by any means and finds more time for the game, sometimes even to the detriment of really important things (the brain gives a person an excuse why you can not do these things, but you need to spend time on the game).
Offerwalls work in non-gaming applications in the same way. Usually these are offers with a countdown timer that burn out after a while. In its most primitive form, this is just a discount with a timer. This also works, but the project quickly falls into a discount trap, and users stop buying something at the usual time, waiting for the discount to appear.
Interestingly, people take a certain amount of time to make a purchase decision with a countdown timer. So don't make it too short. At one conference, the guys either from Bookmate or from LitRes (I forgot) shared their experience of the experiment - when the offer with the countdown timer was valid for two hours, there were few purchases. As soon as the action time was increased to several days, the number of purchases increased significantly. During the tests, the team found that two hours is too short, seven days is too long, but about two days is ideal.
However, it seems to me that discounts are a bad decision. They can be replaced by a more interesting option that still works on the same principle of loss avoidance. You can periodically "attach" small gifts to the item you want to sell. For example, if an application sells a premium account, then attaching some additional "chip" to it, which is not originally included in this account, will increase sales no worse than a discount (I checked).
Imagine that you are buying a bottle of shampoo. You see that your favorite brand has a promotion today: you can buy one bottle of shampoo with a 20% discount from the regular price. And you can buy a bottle at full price, but in this case, it comes with a free bottle of conditioner as a gift. The brain in most cases chooses the second option, because it is afraid of missing out - a free gift is perceived by the brain as something more valuable than a discount, and the buyer begins to think that he has made a good deal. You won't want to miss the chance to get a free gift, no matter how much it costs.
Another example of loss avoidance is trial periods. We are more likely to participate in free trials than pay upfront, since we tell ourselves that a free product costs us nothing. The truth is that we pay with our time and effort to get used to the product. And when the trial period ends, paying for further use will be perceived by the brain as loss avoidance. We will lose all the time and effort invested in the product if we don't continue.
Another good option to avoid losses is the status “only 2 pieces left” or “last copy” in online stores. In a more advanced form, “loss avoidance” monetization can be insuring what the user already has.
In the real world, this works great in fitness centers, when a client can “freeze” an already purchased subscription so as not to lose weeks when he is on vacation. In applications, many people are willing to pay a little extra for a similar option, especially if the payment will not be made with real money, but with some kind of internal currency. Such "coins" are not perceived by our brain as something significant, even if they were bought for real money. A person will part with them much more willingly.
At a stretch, even Uber's price manipulation can be attributed to loss avoidance. The company is rumored to be fixing phone charge and raising the price of a trip for those whose smartphones have 20% charge or less. It is believed that a person with a low smartphone will not want to be left without a taxi and will pay for the trip even at a higher fare.
In some cases, the principle of loss avoidance can also be used for non-monetization functions. For example, delayed registration. If the user first plays a game or achieves something in a non-gaming application, then the brain will perceive this as an invested effort (cost) and will be afraid to lose it just like that. Therefore, if you suggest that the user first do something in the application, and only then ask to create an account, then the fear of losing the effort invested will outweigh the “cost” of the effort to register, and in most cases it will also outweigh the fear of issuing private information to the service.
Here is the function derived by Kanneman and Tversky:
Paradoxically, people tend to over-react to small losses (or gains) but are less likely to over-react to medium and large losses. And if the user compares a commensurate gain and loss, then a loss of the same size is perceived as having greater value.
Also, our willingness to make a decision has nothing to do with how much we already have. Even if we have a million dollars, we will still avoid losing $20 as much as if we had no money.
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