Why a lost ticket hurts more than lost cash

The aha, in writing

1. After losing a ten-dollar bill on the way to a show, most people would still buy a ticket, but after losing the ticket itself, fewer would buy another.
2. The second ticket seems to come out of the same mental theatre jar, so the show feels like it costs twenty. Your brain sorts money into labelled jars even though a dollar is a dollar.
3. In 1981 the split was eighty-eight against forty-six percent; a 2025 replication found ninety against seventy-seven percent, a smaller gap that is still there.