Let’s pretend, for a moment, you are part of a unique experiment. There are two groups of people: the first is given an attractive coffee mug, and the second group receives nothing. The first group – your group – now must choose between keeping the coffee mug or trading it for money.
The second group is simply offered the choice of a mug or money.
Hmmm. Big decisions. What do you do?
Researchers Daniel Kahneman and Vernon L. Smith, who used this experiment and received the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economics, discovered that those without a mug were willing to accept less money than those who would have to give up a mug already in their possession.
Is it any wonder, then, how attached people become to their coffee mugs? Although the line may be thinly drawn, there are plenty of folks who drink their morning beverage out of the same cup nearly every day, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.
It is said by some that coffee mugs can make a personal statement or reveal something about a sipper’s personality.
With that in mind, we thought we’d have a little fun and see if readers could correctly match up what mugs these nine people drink from each morning, using the the clues provided below their photos.
Find out how you did and a little more about each of the people on this page and why they like their cups, on page E2.
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