However, unlike the game theory concept, zero-sum thinking refers to a psychological construct—a person's subjective interpretation of a situation.
Rozycka-Tran et al. (2015) defined zero-sum thinking as: A general belief system about the antagonistic nature of social relations, shared by people in a society or culture and based on the implicit assumption that a finite amount of goods exists in the world, in which one person's winning makes others the losers, and vice versa ... a relatively permanent and general conviction that social relations are like a zero-sum game.
[3] Rubin also points to instances where the understanding of laypeople and economists about economic situations diverge, such as the lump-of-labor fallacy.
Zero-sum thinking can also be understood in terms of proximate causation, which refers to the developmental history of individuals within their own lifetime.
By "Image of Limited Good" I mean that broad areas of peasant behavior are patterned in such fashion as to suggest that peasants view their social, economic, and natural universes—their total environment—as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply, as far as the peasant is concerned.
When the peasant views his economic world as one in which Limited Good prevails, and he can progress only at the expense of another, he is usually very near the truth."
67-68)[17]More recently, Rozycka-Tran et al. (2015) conducted a cross-cultural study that compared the responses of individuals in 37 nations to a scale of zero-sum beliefs.
Rozycka-Tran et al. found that individuals in countries with lower Gross Domestic Product showed stronger zero-sum beliefs on average, suggesting that "the belief in zero-sum game seems to arise in countries with lower income, where resources are scarce" (p. 539).
[1] Similarly, Rozycka-Tran et al. found that individuals with lower socioeconomic status displayed stronger zero-sum beliefs.
For example, the lump of labour fallacy refers to the belief that in the economy there is a fixed amount of work to be done, and thus the allocation of jobs is zero-sum.