Zero-Sum Thinking: Psychological Predictors and Causes

Some resources are zero-sum: If more is consumed by one then less is available for others. Many other resources, such as wealth, membership in a group, liking, respect, and love are not necessarily zero-sum, although people can perceive them as zero-sum. Zero-sum thinking is widely recognised as important because of its divisive consequences for interpersonal and intergroup relations, negotiations and politics. However, rather little attention has been paid to its causes. This project combines ideas from the literatures on negotiations and probability judgements to provide novel experiments and methods for uncovering predictors and causes of zero-sum thinking.