One of the basic insights of economics is that trade is mutually beneficial, making both parties better off than they were before. It’s a proposition about human exchange that stretches back to Adam Smith’s foundational treatise, “The Wealth of Nations.”
...The abounding growth of our global economy underscores this truth, showing how trade turns work into fellowship, as well as fellowship into flourishing. Among economists, there is almost universal agreement on the matter, whether one looks to free-marketers like Milton Friedman or welfare-state liberals like Paul Krugman.
Yet, somehow, a contradictory myth continues to persist and pervade, one which frames economic exchange as a zero-sum game wherein one person’s gain is necessarily another person’s loss. In “The Good Society,” Acton’s educational film series, Michael Miller explains the fallacy as follows:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyH8bo3yztA&t=86s
So, if the evidence of such growth is clear, and if the academic consensus clearly corresponds, why does zero-sum thinking continue to thrive among non-economists?
It’s a question at the center of a new study in which researchers Samuel G.B. Johnson, Jiewen Zhang, and Frank C. Keil explore the psychological roots of what they call “win-win denial.”...
...To understand why, the authors weigh several possibilities, concluding that much of it can be explained by specific psychological mechanisms.
First, it appears as though many people give way to “mercantilist theories of value,” commonly confusing wealth for money...
Second, many tend to project their own personal preferences and notions of value onto others, “failing to observe that people do not arbitrarily enter exchanges”...
...The study considers other possibilities as well (“evolutionary mismatch,” confusion over bargain quality, etc.). But while some of these may play some role, each is ruled out as a root cause....
...This study offers just one introductory glimpse into the roots of such thinking, but in doing so, it reminds us that our common disputes over economic issues are rooted in deeper attitudes about the human person and the basic nature of human relationships in economic life (and beyond)....
