The secret of the cake mix
When instant cake mixes reached the shelves in the 1950s, the thinking went that making things so easy would be welcome. According to the story Norton and colleagues tell in the introduction to their paper, the first reactions were lukewarm, and manufacturers changed the recipe so that people had to add an egg themselves. A little effort made the product more loved. The details of the story are disputed, but the idea behind it has been tested in experiments.
In this experiment you build a small figure from seven tangram pieces. Then we ask the most you would pay for your figure and for an identical one built by the lab, if both were postcards. The two figures look exactly the same; the only difference is that you built one of them.
IKEA boxes, origami and Lego
In their first study, Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely (2012) had some of 52 university students assemble a plain black IKEA storage box, while others were given the assembled box to inspect. Then everyone was asked to bid real money for the box. People who assembled it themselves bid $0.78 on average; people who inspected the ready-made box bid $0.48.
In the second study participants folded an origami frog or crane. They offered $0.23 on average for their own origami. Other participants who saw the same pieces offered only $0.05; for origami folded by experts they offered $0.27. The amateurs valued their own creations almost as highly as expert work, and expected others to agree.
Labour only pays off when it’s finished
Norton and colleagues also looked for the effect’s limits. In one study participants built small Lego sets; one group built a set and left it, another built it and then took it apart, and a third received it pre-built. Only those who built and kept their set bid markedly more for their own set than for their partner’s; among those who took it apart and those who got it pre-built, the difference wasn’t significant.
In another study, people who stopped before the last two steps of an IKEA box offered $0.59 on average; those who completed it offered $1.46. According to the authors, labour turns into love when it ends in success. That is why we show the results of people who did and didn’t press the hint button separately.
Why do we love what we make?
One explanation is effort justification: in Aronson and Mills’ (1959) study, people who joined a discussion group through a severe initiation liked the group more. Valuing what we worked on protects the feeling that our effort wasn’t wasted. Another explanation is competence: completing a task makes us feel capable, and that feeling transfers to the product. The effect disappearing for unfinished work fits this explanation.
Ownership may also play a role: Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler (1990) showed that merely owning a mug raises the price people ask for it. But Marsh, Kanngiesser and Hood (2018) found that the tendency to value one’s own creations appears in children around the age of 5 and can’t be explained by ownership alone; in their view the link between the creation and the self matters. Sarstedt and colleagues (2017) found the effect again with a different set-up and suggested that a feeling of psychological ownership mediates it.
The IKEA effect in everyday life
Flat-pack furniture, meal kits, customisable products and services where customers contribute a bit of effort can all benefit from this effect. There is a flip side too: we may value our own ideas, projects and code more than others think they deserve.
On the results screen we compare the price you gave your figure with the price you gave the ready-made one. You can see the crowd’s median premium and the share of people who priced their own figure higher. If you gave both the same price, that is valuable data too: the effect is an average and doesn’t show up in everyone.