The evolutionary origins of mental accounting and their influence on account operation processes

: The theory of mental accounting posits that individuals create separate mental accounts for different decision-making tasks, each budgeted independently with non-fungible funds. This separate accounting management method reduces the efficiency of resource allocation, and it is thus considered a deviation from economic rationality. Despite being recognized as a cognitive bias or anomaly, mental accounting remains a persistent feature of human behavior. A fundamental question remains unanswered: if mental accounting is inherently inefficient, why has it been widely preserved through evolution? Drawing on evolutionary psychology, this research proposes that mental accounting is an adaptive mechanism shaped by ancestral environments to fulfill fundamental evolutionary goals, namely survival, reproduction, and hedonic well-being. These goals structure both the classification and management of mental accounts. Specifically, they shape the typical categorizations of accounts, while their relative importance and activation levels determine the rigidity of account governance, as evidenced by preferences in resource allocation, reinforcement of resource inputs, and resistance to cross-account transfers. By testing the evolutionary origins hypothesis, this research aims to determine whether mental accounting, despite its apparent inefficiency in modern contexts, embodies a form of ecological rationality with adaptive value. The findings may offer a deeper understanding of the evolutionary functions underlying this seemingly irrational behavior.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Advances in Psychological Science

• Publication date

  Unknown publication date

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3724/sp.j.1042.2026.0018
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Mental accounting of product returns

  2023cited by this paper
• High-Definition Transcranial Stimulation over the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Alters the Sunk Cost Effect: A Mental Accounting Framework

  2022cited by this paper
• Feeling and Calculation: The Impact of Lay Rationalism Thinking Mode on Mental Budgeting

  2022cited by this paper
• Addressing the sins of consumer psychology via the evolutionary lens

  2021cited by this paper
• An assessment of the effects of mental accounting on overspending behaviour: An empirical study

  2020cited by this paper
• Individual Differences in Mental Accounting

  2019cited by this paper
• Mental accounting of income tax and value added tax among self-employed business owners

  2019cited by this paper
• Household behavior in practicing mental budgeting based on the theory of planned behavior

  2018cited by this paper
• The Economic Approach To Human Behavior

  2016cited by this paper
• Fundamental motives: How evolutionary needs influence consumer behavior

  2013cited by this paper
• The nonfungibility of mental accounting: A revision

  2013cited by this paper
• Boosting beauty in an economic decline: mating, spending, and the lipstick effect.

  2012cited by this paper
• Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: conspicuous consumption as a sexual signaling system.

  2011cited by this paper
• Mental budgeting and the management of household finance

  2011cited by this paper
• Time course and task dependence of emotion effects in word processing

  2009cited by this paper
• The evolutionary bases of consumption

  2007cited by this paper
• Aspects of endowment: a query theory of value construction.

  2007cited by this paper
• Malleable Mental Accounting: The Effect of Flexibility on the Justification of Attractive Spending and Consumption Decisions

  2006cited by this paper
• Behavioral Portfolio Theory

  2000cited by this paper
• Choices, Values, and Frames

  2000cited by this paper
• Applications of evolutionary psychology in marketing

  2000cited by this paper
• Mental accounting matters

  1999cited by this paper
• Broadening behavioral decision research: Multiple levels of cognitive processing

  1999cited by this paper
• The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt

  1998cited by this paper
• Mental Accounting as Self-Regulation: Representativeness to Goal-Derived Categories

  1998cited by this paper
• Mental Budgeting and Consumer Decisions

  1996cited by this paper
• A Note on the Evolution of Homo Economicus

  1994cited by this paper
• Mental accounting and categorization

  1992cited by this paper
• Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice

  1985cited by this paper
• An Economic Theory of Self-Control

  1981cited by this paper
• The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice.

  1981cited by this paper
• Principles of Categorization

  1978cited by this paper
• Higher and lower needs.

  1948cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.