When making decisions, people group gains and losses, and the way they choose to form these groupings affects the choices they make. This phenomenon, called mental accounting, is powerful and intuitively compelling. To this point, however, little attention has been devoted to the psychological principles that underlie mental accounting. In this article, we explore the psychological processes that set up mental accounts and assign gains or losses to these accounts. We propose that (a) currently active goals set up mental accounts, and (b) gains and losses are weighted into these accounts proportionally to their representativeness to the goal that sets up the account. We review existing evidence that supports this goals-representativeness view of mental accounting and describe some new studies designed to test these proposals. We also review other choice phenomena (e.g., sunk costs and entrapment) in which mental accounting is involved. We suggest that mental accounting is a useful self-regulatory strategy, despite the fact that it can sometimes lead to irrational choices.

An English translation of this paper is available from any of the authors.