Yes indeed, but it can be dangerous to intellectualize it. Encapsulating what people in that situation experience as "loss aversion" confuses reality for a model of reality, IMO.

I'm not saying you are, but most people I know who talk in those terms forget that. Ceci n'est pas une pipe, the map is not the terrain, etc. etc.

At the extreme, the subjective experience is something like this: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/