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Examples of the zero-sum bias

People sometimes view membership in social groups as being zero-sum: belonging to one social group excludes you from being a member of a different group.
People sometimes view gender hierarchies in the workplace as being zero-sum, which can cause them to be more opposed to gender-fair policies.
People sometimes believe that there is an inherent zero-sum competition between different ethnic groups, which can cause them to develop negative attitudes towards immigrants.
People sometimes view racism as a zero-sum game, meaning that they believe that a decrease in racism against one group will be balanced by an increase in racism toward other groups.

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created an idea from a article:

EFFECTIVIOLOGY

The Zero-Sum Bias: When People Think that Everything is a Competition

effectiviology.com

MORE IDEAS FROM THE SAME ARTICLE

Why we experience the zero-sum bias

Mistaken belief in limited resources: assumeing that a certain resource is more limited than is actually the case.
Mistaken belief in trade-off consistency: assuming that there must be a tradeoff between the various advantages and disadvantages of each option, so that ...

Zero-sum bias effects

It can generally be said to affect people on two scales:

The zero-sum bias

A cognitive bias that causes people to mistakenly believe that one party’s gains are directly balanced by other parties’ losses.

How to avoid the zero-sum bias

To reduce the degree to which you experience the zero-sum bias, you need to identify cases where you assume that a certain situation is zero-sum, and then assess the situation rationally in order to identify whether it is actually zero-sum, which you can do, for example, by asking yours...