In regards to this, here is a short story of game design history.
Back when World of Warcraft launched (or during the beta, I don't remember anymore it has been 17 years) it used to have a tired xp penalty that was applied after you earned a certain amount of xp without logging out. This caused a lot of complains and negative feedback about how it was penalising players etc and so forth. In short a lot of people disliked it. So Blizzard dropped it and after a while introduced ... rested xp bonus... that, and get this, gave extra xp after having been offline for some time. The response? People liked it! They said it made it feel good to get more xp when coming back etc and so forth. Such a better game system than the old xp penalty, yes?
For those who did not get it (hey we all have our off days ) let me make it explicit: the two systems were identical. There was nothing changed except for the wording.
The reason for this is that people dislike feeling like they are losing things a whole lot more than not gaining things, even if the end result is exactly identical.
It has to do with being monkeys+.