This study adds weight to Loss Aversion theory through an interesting experiment design.

Loss Aversion: a cognitive bias that causes potential losses to be weighed more heavily than potential gains (the ratio is somewhere around 2:1, meaning that most people will feel comfortable with a decision only when the likely gains are double the likely losses).

In it, Steven Levitt (of Freakanomics fame) had people facing a life decision — from big ones like ending a relationship and leaving a job to lesser ones like going on a diet — and who were on the fence, toss a coin to indicate the direction and then tracked their happiness over the next year.

Under Loss Aversion, this would mean they were valuing the change at about 2x utility of not taking the decision. However, since people who made the change report higher happiness, this counters expected utility theory.

…when it comes to “important” decisions (e.g. job quitting, separating from your husband or wife), making a change appears to be not only correlated with increased self-reported happiness, but also causally related, especially six months after the coin toss.³ Those who were instructed by the coin toss to make a change were both more likely to make the change (as noted above) and, on average, report greater happiness on the follow-up surveys. This finding is inconsistent with expected utility theory; those who are on the margin should, on average, be equally well off regardless of the decision they make. This result provides strong empirical support for the notion of a status quo bias (Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1998; Kahneman et al., 1991). There is suggestive evidence that the coin toss outcome on “less important” decisions (e.g. going on a diet, dying one’s hair, quitting a bad habit) influences future happiness in a similar, but more muted, fashion.

https://academic.oup.com/restud/advance-article/doi/10.1093/restud/rdaa016/5834495

This part is particularly interesting in that simply making the change brought people more happiness — ie “change is good for the soul”. That needs to be studied more but is one explanation.

…for all decisions—not just the most important ones—there appears to be a causal impact of making a change on how satisfied the subject is ex post with the decision. Those who were instructed to make a change by the coin toss are substantially more likely to report that they made the correct decision and that they would make the same decision again if given the chance.

https://academic.oup.com/restud/advance-article/doi/10.1093/restud/rdaa016/5834495

When thinking about adoption of your product / service / cause, finding a way to message this in your value proposition might have an effect to tip the balance even if the utility is biased against making the decision. I look forward to seeing more study in this area.