Denomination Effect
A form of cognitive bias relating to currency, suggesting people may be less likely to spend larger currency denominations than their equivalent value in smaller denominations.
Origin
Marketing professors Priya Raghubir of New York University and Joydeep Srivastava of the University of Maryland named the denomination effect in a 2009 paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research. In one experiment, they gave 89 undergraduates a dollar — some as a single bill, others as four quarters — and found that 63% of quarter-holders bought candy compared with only 26% of bill-holders.
Everyday Use
You break a $20 bill at the vending machine and suddenly the coins feel like "spending money" — but you'd have hesitated to spend the $20 itself. That same reluctance shows up when people hoard large bills and freely spend small ones, even though the total value is identical.