Money Illusion / 货币错觉

Money illusion / 货币错觉 is the tendency to react to nominal amounts rather than real value. 123.人性实验：当心你自己！ uses clock-setting, summer/winter time, poker-chip denominations, and inflation-adjusted wage examples to show how people can be affected by surface numbers even when they know the underlying conversion.

The concept overlaps with economics but the episode reads it psychologically: the representation is part of the action environment. A changed number, chip, or clock can trigger behavior before the person reanchors on the real value.

Key Claims

• Nominal increases can feel better than smaller nominal increases that are larger in real terms.
• Tokenized or doubled denominations can alter betting behavior even when exchange rates are known.
• Money illusion shows that knowing a conversion rule does not guarantee acting from it.
• Interfaces and accounting labels can shape decisions by changing the felt unit of action.

Connections

• Inflation Bias - macro-policy neighbor that also concerns inflation, though at an institutional rather than individual-perception level.
• Behavioral Investing Biases - adjacent domain where nominal anchors and paper gains affect choices.
• Framing Effect / 表述框架效应 and Anchoring Effect / 锚定效应 - presentation and reference-point effects.
• Social Psychology / 社会心理学 - source field context.