Well the official numbers of both polls came out to:

If you had $300,
10 - would take the extra $100
6 - would flip for the $200

If you had $500
4 - would give away $100
11 - would flip to keep it all

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The purpose of this poll was to illustrate what the book I'm reading (What the Dog Saw) says about human emotion with regards to the stock market. I just wanted to see if the results here would be the same as the book. And they were if you took the numbers in a vacuum, but since the voters are public I can see that nobody chose change votes in the polls.

So anyway, this is want the book said. It said that most people would rather not risk money if they don't have it. Meaning that if you had $300 you would rather take the extra $100 to get to $400 than to try to get to $500 with a little risk.

It also said that most people would rather risk money that they have in order to keep their money. So if you have $500, you would take a risk to keep it rather than take a sure $100 loss.

In both cases, your chances of keeping $300, $400 or $500 is exactly the same.

With the above said...

This is why when people are in the stock market they sell with small gains and hold their losses. If you buy a stock for $10 and it goes to $12, you worry about it dropping back down to $11. They want to lock in profits so you sell some or all.

However, if you buy a stock for $10 and it drops to $9, you will risk the stock going down to $8 on the chance that it may come back to $10.