You like things more when you helped make them, even badly
A frustrating night of wrong turns with flat-pack furniture can create lasting affection, and experiments show the same happens with food, gardens, and more.
Business Insider · How the 'IKEA effect' can motivate people to work harderYou like something more once you helped make it, even if you made it badly.
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely learned this after assembling his first piece of IKEA furniture. He put parts together the wrong way, it took a very long time, and it was rather frustrating.
Afterward, he realized he felt a special fondness for it and kept carrying it with him as he moved around the country. It was not the quality of the furniture, he said: "we had an evening together, we had a relationship."
His team found that pattern in experiments, for example with furniture, food, setting up a stereo, or making a garden. When people put some of themselves into making something, they tend to like it more.
Questions people ask
Does the effect still work if what I made is low quality?
Yes. In the 2012 IKEA effect paper by Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely, people who built simple origami or assembled plain storage sets valued their own creations well above what others would pay for the same amateur work. The extra value came from their own labor, not from higher quality.
Do I have to work hard, or does any small touch count?
Trying it yourself is usually enough, though harder work tends to strengthen it. The key is hands-on creation you finish yourself, rather than watching someone else do it or doing only a tiny, trivial step.
How do companies use this idea with workers or customers?
Managers use it by letting people build, customize, or finish part of a product, recipe, or project, then clearly mark the contribution. Signing work, keeping a name attached to it, and giving public credit all help turn a task into something that feels owned.