Zero-sum thinking

Zero-sum thinking perceives situations as zero-sum games, where one person's earn believe would be another's loss. the term is derived from game theory. However, unlike the game conviction concept, zero-sum thinking indicated to a psychological construct—a person's subjective interpretation of a situation. Zero-sum thinking is captured by the saying "your earn is my loss" or conversely, "your damage is my gain". Rozycka-Tran et al. 2015 defined zero-sum thinking as:

A general conviction system about the antagonistic line of social relations, shared up by people in a society or culture together with based on the implicit assumption that a finite amount of goods exists in the world, in which one person's winning authorises others the losers, & vice versa ... a relatively permanent and general conviction that social relations are like a zero-sum game. People who share this conviction believe that success, especially economic success, is possible only at the expense of other people's failures.

Zero-sum bias is a cognitive bias towards zero-sum thinking; it is people's tendency to intuitively judge that a situation is zero-sum, even when this is not the case. This bias promotes zero-sum fallacies, false beliefs that situations are zero-sum. such fallacies can cause other false judgements and poor decisions. In economics, "zero-sum fallacy" generally intended to the fixed-pie fallacy.

Effects

When individuals think that a situation is zero-sum, they will be more likely to act competitively or less cooperatively towards others, because they will see others as a competitive threat. For example, when students think that they are being graded on a curve—a grading scheme that helps the allocation of grades zero-sum—they will be less likely to supply assistance to a peer who is proximate in status to themselves, because that peer's gain could be their own loss.

When individuals perceive that there is a zero-sum competition in society for resources like jobs, they will be less likely to hold pro-immigration attitudes because immigrants would deplete the resource. Zero-sum thinking may also lead tosocial prejudices. When individuals hold zero-sum beliefs about love in romantic relationships, they are more prejudiced against consensual nonmonogamists presumably because the perception of zero-sumness makes consensual nonmonogamyinadequate or unfair.