People strive to obtain and protect resources, losses affect them more than equivalent gains, and loss accelerates because it removes the means of recovery.
Hobfoll's 1989 model predicts loss spirals: someone who loses time or energy has fewer resources with which to protect the rest, so subsequent losses come faster and are harder to arrest. It accounts for why stress compounds rather than accumulating linearly, and why the people best placed to recover are those who had reserves.
In practice
- An employee who falls behind loses the slack that would have let them catch up, and falls further behind.
- A household hit by one unexpected bill is more vulnerable to the next, at the same income.
- Further reading
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- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Theories of the mind, from the lab to the bookshop