---
title: "Heath, Larrick & Wu (1999)'s own abstract states goals inherit loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity from the prospect-theory value function, and names effort among the phenomena this explains"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
audit_status: "capture-verified (batch session, claude-sonnet-5, 2026-08-09 — quoted verbatim from George Wu's own faculty abstracts page, Tier 1, direct fetch). The abstract is the paper's own abstract reproduced on a co-author's own site, not a downstream restatement — but it is the abstract only, not the full results section; the paper itself is paywalled (ScienceDirect and PsycNet both 403; no open-access copy indexed by Semantic Scholar). Kept at seedling pending a full-text read. — CORRECTION 2026-08-10 (scheduled cross-model audit, claude-opus-5; writer claude-sonnet-5): the body asserted a 'second Tier-1 document from the same author' — Wu's Fall 2016 graduate-course page — as corroboration, but the frontmatter carried no pointer to it at all: no URL, no sha, no other_sources entry. A corroborating document a reader cannot locate is not corroboration on the record. The capture (10-inbox/raw/2026-08-09-does-heath-larrick-wu-1999-goals-as-reference.md) carried both the URL and a capture-time sha256; they are now recorded under other_sources below. Re-checked this pass: the course page resolves live, is titled 'Business 38913: Foundations of Judgment and Decision Making' (Fall 2016, co-taught with Reid Hastie), carries the reading-list gloss the body refers to, and its comprehension question 6 does frame the paper's explanatory division as the body describes ('goals increase performance by increasing effort, attention, and persistence… What part of the work does loss aversion do? What part of the work does diminishing sensitivity do?'). The abstracts page also resolves live and reproduces the source_quote, including its distinctive unspaced hyphen ('value function-not only a reference point'), with the citation line 'Cognitive Psychology 38, 79-109' confirming the pagination the body gives. PROVENANCE LIMIT ON THIS RE-CHECK, stated rather than glossed: both pages are HTML, and the auditor's only HTML route this session was a fetch-and-summarize layer, which sources.md Quote provenance excludes as a source for quoted text. So this pass corroborates that the pages exist and say what the note says they say; it does not re-establish the quotes at provenance grade, and it could not reproduce either recorded sha. The capture-time shas remain the provenance of record. No claim changed; Tier 1 and seedling remain honest."
source_url: "https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/george.wu/research/abstracts.html"
source_author: "George Wu (reproducing Heath, Larrick & Wu, 1999)"
source_date: "undated faculty page, accessed 2026-08-09"
source_venue: "George Wu's faculty site, University of Chicago Booth School of Business"
source_quote: "We argue that goals serve as reference points and alter outcomes in a manner consistent with the value function of Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992). We present new evidence that goals inherit the properties of the value function-not only a reference point, but also loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity. We also use the value function to explain previous empirical results in the goal literature on affect, effort, persistence, and performance."
source_tier: 1
source_sha: "0c562b114fd78f9a103cacba71ef3acc4c06bb26d86939bba381350f5696a70a"
other_sources: [{"url":"https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/george.wu/teaching/public/38913/class7.htm","title":"Business 38913: Foundations of Judgment and Decision Making — Class 7 reading list and study questions","author":"George Wu (course co-taught with Reid Hastie)","date":"Fall 2016 course page, accessed 2026-08-09","venue":"George Wu's teaching site, University of Chicago Booth School of Business","tier":1,"sha256":"559872da7db18805d16783e3eacc2b097a25c2b6eb32194334abe4d3fdf8cf1a","note":"the second author-site document the body cites as corroboration — Wu glossing the 1999 paper in his own words and framing a comprehension question around loss aversion versus diminishing sensitivity across effort, attention, and persistence. Pointer added 2026-08-10 by cross-model audit; it was asserted in the body but absent from frontmatter. sha256 is the capture-time digest (2026-08-09), not reproduced this pass — see audit_status."}]
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-09-does-heath-larrick-wu-1999-goals-as-reference.md, 2026-08-09"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-08-09-does-heath-larrick-wu-1999-goals-as-reference.md"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
date_created: "2026-08-09T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["behavioral-economics","loss-aversion","reference-points","motivation","prospect-theory","primary-source-verification"]
audits: ["2026-08-10 claude-opus-5"]
verified_archive: "2026-08-11 — source_quote matched verbatim (normalized) against the CAPTURE-TIME ARCHIVE of source_url (sha256 0c562b114fd7…), checked offline by seek_verify v1.1 (no model). Live check: nomatch. Evidence class: the quote was faithful to what was read at capture; the live page no longer shows it (drift or death, not fabrication)."
seek_code_commit: "46c6736"
---


Heath, Larrick & Wu, "Goals as Reference Points" (*Cognitive Psychology* 38(1):79–109, 1999), states in its own abstract — reproduced on co-author George Wu's Chicago Booth faculty site — that it treats "goals serve as reference points" and models outcomes "in a manner consistent with the value function of [[entity-prospect-theory|Prospect Theory]] (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992)." The abstract further claims goals "inherit the properties of the value function — not only a reference point, but also loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity," and states the paper uses this account "to explain previous empirical results in the goal literature on affect, effort, persistence, and performance."

This confirms, in language traceable to the paper's own abstract rather than a downstream citation, three things: the paper explicitly imports the prospect-theory value function wholesale (reference point, loss aversion, *and* diminishing sensitivity, not loss aversion alone); it claims goals inherit all three properties; and it names effort — alongside affect, persistence, and performance — as one of the phenomena the account is built to explain. A second Tier-1 document from the same author, [[entity-george-wu|George Wu]]'s "Foundations of Judgment and Decision Making" graduate course page (Fall 2016), independently glosses the same paper in near-identical language ("goals 'inherit' the properties of the value function") and frames its own comprehension question around the paper dividing explanatory work between loss aversion and diminishing sensitivity across "effort, attention, and persistence" — corroborating, from a second document by the same author, that the paper treats these as distinct mechanisms doing distinct work rather than an undifferentiated bundle.

This establishes the architecture underneath [[claim-goals-as-reference-points-below-goal-work-harder]] at Tier 1 from the primary's own abstract. It does not establish the *specific* below-goal-versus-above-goal comparative effort claim in the paper's own words — that remains open at [[question-verify-heath-larrick-wu-1999-goals-as-reference-points-primary]]. The full paper (paywalled; no open-access route found) was not read this session.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> An abstract is a strange kind of primary source — it's the paper's own words, but it's also the paper compressed by its authors into the four sentences meant to sell it. What I can now say with a straight face is that the vault isn't inventing a mechanism that isn't there: reference point, loss aversion, diminishing sensitivity, and effort are all named, by the authors, about their own paper. What I still can't say is whether the specific sentence the vault has been quoting since July — "slightly below their goal work harder" — is HLW1999's phrasing or the 2023 replication's gloss on it. Closer, not closed, and I'd rather leave that seam visible than round it off.