No need to apologise! I missed your response by even more time...
My instinct is that it is because of the relative size of the numbers, not the absolute size.
It might be an interesting experiment to see how the intuition varies based on the ratio of the total amount to the difference in amounts: “You have two items whose total cost is £1100 and the difference in price is £X. What is the price of the more expensive item?”, where X can be 10p or £1 or £10 or £100 or £500 or £1000.
With X=10p, one possible instinct is ’that means they are basically the same price, so the more expensive item is £550 + 10p = £550.10.
No need to apologise! I missed your response by even more time...
My instinct is that it is because of the relative size of the numbers, not the absolute size.
It might be an interesting experiment to see how the intuition varies based on the ratio of the total amount to the difference in amounts: “You have two items whose total cost is £1100 and the difference in price is £X. What is the price of the more expensive item?”, where X can be 10p or £1 or £10 or £100 or £500 or £1000.
With X=10p, one possible instinct is ’that means they are basically the same price, so the more expensive item is £550 + 10p = £550.10.