It's definitely not battered spouse syndrome, though. As you want us to believe.
Not exactly, but its more of a "comfy syndrome", those who used NV for so long they don't want to "risk" switching sides, also, because they hear a lot of awful things "ATI? bad drivers..." or "NV has smoother gameplay" or "PHYSX!!"..
Thus, they are willing to pay extra for NV products.
Its because in the early days, NV built a solid reputation with their TNT GPUs, carrying on to the Geforce. ATI struggled early, and they DID have horrible drivers. Because of this, people who are prone to brand loyalty or "comfy syndrome" have been happy to be ripped off by NV over the years. Happy and willing to pay extra for the perceived benefits, even when their laptops overheated and died, or a new driver destroyed their GPUs in Starcraft II.. etc etc.
Unless there is a specific need, ie. CUDA and Physx (adaptive vsync and lightboost works for AMD too), someone with an open mind and not too lazy to fall into "comfy syndrome" would have to go with better perf/$.