Concept · Cognitive Bias: Economic and consumer biases
Mental accounting
Origin: Thaler, 1985/1999
Biological Parallel
Animals partition energy into functionally separate 'accounts'—fat reserves for winter survival, immediate glucose for flight response, reproductive reserves for mating season. A squirrel won't raid its winter cache for daily foraging because the costs of category violation (starvation risk) outweigh the benefits. Mental accounting mirrors this: humans treat windfall gains differently from salary because evolution wired us to tag resources by source and purpose, not fungible value.