A recent study by Baek et al. (2017) found that depressed patients with a history of suicide attempt(s) were exhibiting risk and loss aversion much more so than the general population does. (Note that loss aversion is used here in the narrow sense from behavioral economics "people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it's better to not lose \$5 than to find \$5".)
It's also known that some people persist in relationships with abusive partners, and a substantial proportion of these [self-]justify such choices by seeing some redeeming quality in their abusive partner. So, in a sense, the victims are averse to losing some (perceived) good, even though the cost for holding onto that might be really high. And now my question is whether such people would exhibit risk or loss aversion in the behavioral economics sense, i.e. are there studies like the aforementioned one by Baek but on victims of abuse who persist in their costly relationship?
