Reading through this paper, Win–Win Denial: The Psychological Underpinnings of Zero-Sum Thinking, whose abstract is as follows:
A core proposition in economics is that voluntary exchanges benefit both parties. We show that people often deny the mutually beneficial nature of exchange, instead espousing the belief that one or both parties fail to benefit from the exchange. Across 4 studies (and 7 further studies in the Supplementary Materials), participants read about simple exchanges of goods and services, judging whether each party to the transaction was better off or worse off afterwards. These studies revealed that win–win denial is pervasive, with buyers consistently seen as less likely to benefit from transactions than sellers. Several potential psychological mechanisms underlying win–win denial are considered, with the most important influences being mercantilist theories of value (confusing wealth for money) and naïve realism (failing to observe that people do not arbitrarily enter exchanges). We argue that these results have widespread implications for politics and society.
…apart from the obvious thoughts, I am also struck by the observation that there is probably a point to be made here in comparative theological terms, for some Imperial scholar.
Sacrifice is close to a universal in human religions, from their earliest foundations to the modern day, not to mention in theologically-derived ethics. This is, however, distinctly not a feature in Flamic theology, except for very infrequent examples in the most do ut des sense possible.
To what extent, one might well ask, is the concept of sacrifice fueled by our psychological near-inability to believe in positive-sum exchanges and games?