Chapter 3
The IKEA Effect

Why We Overvalue What We Make

Every time I walk into IKEA, my mind overflows with home improvement ideas. The gigantic discount build-it-yourself home furnishings store is like a huge play castle for grown-ups. I walk through the various display rooms and imagine how that stylish desk or lamp or bookcase might look in my house. I love to inspect the inexpensive sleek dressers in the bedroom displays and check out all the utensils and plates in the shiny kitchens full of self-assembly cabinets. I feel an urge to buy a truckload of do-it-yourself furniture and fill my house with everything from cheap, colorful watering cans to towering armoires.

I don’t indulge the IKEA urge very often, but I do make a trip when necessity calls. On one of these trips, I purchased an übermodern Swedish solution to the problem of the toys that lay scattered throughout our family room. I bought a self-assembly toy chest, took it home, opened the boxes, read the instructions, and started screwing the various pieces into place. (I should be clear that I’m not exactly talented in the domain of physical assembly, but I do find pleasure in the process of building—perhaps a remnant of playing with Legos as a child.) Unfortunately, the pieces were not as clearly marked as I would have hoped and the instructions were sketchy, especially during some crucial steps. Like many experiences in life, the assembly process impishly followed Murphy’s Law: every time I was forced to guess the placement of a piece of wood or screw, I guessed incorrectly. Sometimes I realized my mistake right away. Other times I didn’t realize I’d goofed until I was three or four steps into the process, which required me to backtrack and start over.

Still, I like puzzles, so I tried to view the process of reconstituting my IKEA furniture as doing a large jigsaw puzzle. But screwing the same bolts in and out made this mind-set difficult to keep, and the whole process took longer than I’d expected. Finally, I found myself looking at a fully assembled toy chest. I gathered my kids’ toys and placed them carefully inside. I was very proud of my work, and for weeks afterward I smiled proudly at my creation each time I passed it. From an objective point of view, I am quite sure that it was not the highest-quality piece of furniture I could have purchased. Nor had I designed anything, measured anything, cut wood, or hammered any nails. But I suspect that the few hours I struggled with the toy chest brought us closer together. I felt more attached to it than any other piece of furniture in our house. And I imagined that it, too, was fonder of me than my other furniture was.

Something from the Oven

Pride of creation and ownership runs deep in human beings. When we make a meal from scratch or build a bookshelf, we smile and say to ourselves, “I am so proud of what I just made!” The question is: why do we take ownership in some cases and not others? At what point do we feel justified in taking pride in something we’ve worked on?

At the low end of the creation scale are things such as instant macaroni and cheese which, personally, I can’t regard as an act of artistry. No unique skill is required to make it, and the effort involved is minimal: pick up a package, pay for it, take it home, open the box, boil the water, cook and drain the noodles, stir them together with butter, milk, and orange-colored flavoring, and serve. Accordingly, it is very hard to take any pride of ownership in such a creation. At the other end of the scale, there’s a meal made from scratch, such as your grandmother’s lovingly made chicken noodle soup, stuffed bell peppers, and Pippin apple pie. In those (rare) cases, we justifiably feel ownership and pride in our creation.

But what about the meals that fall somewhere between those two extremes? What if we “doctor” a jar of off-the-shelf pasta sauce with fresh herbs from our garden and a few elegant shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese? What if we add a few roasted peppers? And would it make a difference if the peppers were store-bought or grown in our garden? In short, how much effort must we expend in order to be able to view our own creations with pride?

To understand the basic recipe for ownership and pride, let’s take a historical look at semi-preprepared food. From the moment instant baking mixes of all kinds (for piecrusts, biscuits, and so on) were introduced in the late 1940s, they had a strong presence in American grocery carts and pantries, and ultimately at the dinner table. However, not all mixes were greeted with equal enthusiasm. Housewives were peculiarly reticent about using instant cake mixes, which required simply adding water. Some marketers wondered whether the cake mixes were too sweet or artificial-tasting. But no one could explain why the mixes used to make piecrusts and biscuits—made up of pretty much the same basic ingredients—were so popular, while cake mixes didn’t sell. Why did hardworking housewives not particularly care if the piecrusts they used came out of a box? Why were they more sensitive about cakes?

One theory was that the cake mixes simplified the process to such an extent that the women did not feel as though the cakes they made were “theirs.” As the food writer Laura Shapiro points out in her book Something from the Oven,3 biscuits and piecrusts are important, but they are not a self-contained course. A housewife could happily receive a compliment on a dish that included a purchased component without feeling that it was inappropriately earned. A cake, on the other hand, is often served by itself and represents a complete course. On top of that, cakes often carry great emotional significance, symbolizing a special occasion.* A would-be baker would hardly be willing to consider herself (or publicly admit to being) someone who makes birthday cakes from “just a mix.” Not only would she feel humiliated or guilty; she might also disappoint her guests, who would feel that they were not being treated to something special.

At the time, a psychologist and marketing expert by the name of Ernest Dichter speculated that leaving out some of the ingredients and allowing women to add them to the mix might resolve the issue.•* This idea became known as the “egg theory.” Sure enough, once Pillsbury left out the dried eggs and required women to add fresh ones, along with milk and oil, to the mix, sales took off. For housewives in the 1950s, adding eggs and one or two other ingredients was apparently enough to elevate cake mixes from the realm of store-bought to servable, even if the dessert was only slightly doctored. This basic drive for ownership in the kitchen, coupled with the desire for convenience, is why the Betty Crocker slogan “You and Betty Crocker can bake someone happy” is so clever. The work is still yours, with a little time- and laborsaving help from a domestic icon. There’s no shame in that, right?

IN MY MIND, one person who understands, better than anyone else, the delicate balance between the desire to feel pride of ownership and the wish to not spend too much time in the kitchen is Sandra Lee of “Semi-Homemade” fame. Lee has literally patented a precise equation delineating the point at which this crossover occurs: the “70/30 Semi-Homemade® Philosophy.” According to Lee, overextended cooks can feel the joy of creation while saving time by using ready-made products for 70 percent of the process (think cake mix, store-bought minced garlic, a jar of marinara sauce) and 30 percent “fresh creative touches” (a bit of honey and vanilla in the cake mix, fresh basil in the marinara sauce). To the delight of viewers and the frustration of gourmets and foodies, she combines off-the-shelf products with just the right amount of personalization.

For example, here is Sandra Lee’s recipe for “Sensuous Chocolate Truffles”:4

Prep Time: 15 min

Level: Easy

Yield: about 36 truffles

Ingredients:

1 (16-ounce) container chocolate frosting

¾ cup powdered sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Directions:

Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. With a hand mixer, beat frosting, powdered sugar, and vanilla in large bowl until smooth. Using a tablespoon . . . form into balls and place on cookie sheet. Dust truffles with cocoa powder. Cover and refrigerate truffles until ready to serve.

In essence, Sandra Lee has perfected the egg theory, demonstrating to her ebullient followers the minimum effort it takes to be able to own an otherwise impersonal dish. Her television show, magazine, and numerous cookbooks offer evidence that a spoonful of ownership is a crucial ingredient in the psychological exercise that is cooking.

Pride of ownership is hardly confined to women and kitchens, of course. Local Motors, Inc., a more manly company, takes the egg theory even further. The small firm allows you to design and then physically build your own car over a period of roughly four days. You can choose a basic design and then customize the final product to taste, keeping regional and climatic considerations in mind. Of course, you don’t build it by yourself; a group of experts helps you. The clever idea behind Local Motors is to allow customers to experience the “birth” of their car and a deep connection to something personal and precious. (How many men refer to their car as “my baby”?) Really, it’s a remarkably creative strategy; the energy and time that you invest in building your car ensures that you will love it almost as you love your precious kids.

Of course, sometimes things that we value transform us from pleasurable attachment to complete fixation, as was the case with Gollum’s precious ring in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Whether it’s a magical ring, a lovingly constructed car, or a new throw rug, a precious object can come to consume certain kinds of people. (If you suffer from overweening love for such an object, repeat after me: “It’s just a [fill in the blank: car, rug, book, toy box . . . ].”)

I Love My Origami

Of course, the notion that an investment of labor results in attachment is not a new one. Over the last few decades, many studies have shown that an increase in effort can result in an increase in value across many different domains.* For example, as the effort people invest in getting initiated into a social group, such as a fraternity or tenured faculty, becomes more wearisome, painful, and humiliating, the more its members value their group. Another example might be a Local Motors customer who, after spending $50,000 and several days to design and construct his car, might say to himself, “Having just gone through all of this incredible effort, I really, really love this car. I will take good care of it and cherish it forever.”

I told the story of my beautiful toy chest to Mike Norton (who is currently a professor at Harvard University) and Daniel Mochon (a postdoctoral associate at the University of California at San Diego), and we discovered that we all had similar experiences. I’m sure you have, too. For instance, let’s say you’re visiting your Aunt Eva. The walls of her house are decorated with a lot of homemade art: framed drawings of oddly shaped fruit resting next to a bowl, halfhearted watercolors of trees by a lake, something resembling a fuzzy human shape, and so on. When you look at this aesthetically challenged artwork, you wonder why your aunt would hang it on her wall. On closer inspection, you notice that the fancy signature at the bottom of the paintings is Aunt Eva’s. All of a sudden it is clear to you that Aunt Eva doesn’t merely have bizarre taste; rather, she is blinded by the appeal of her own creation. “Oh, my!” you say loudly in her direction. “This is lovely. Did you paint this yourself? It’s so, um . . . intricate!” On hearing her work so praised, dear Eva reciprocates by showering you with her homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, which fortunately are a vast improvement on her artwork.

Mike, Daniel, and I decided that the notion of attachment to the things we make was worth testing, and in particular we wanted to understand the process by which labor begets love. Our first step (as in all important research projects) was to come up with a code name for the effect. In honor of the inspiration for the study, we decided to call the overvaluation resulting from labor “the IKEA effect.” But simply documenting the IKEA effect was not what we were after. We wanted to find out whether the greater perceived value resulting from the IKEA effect might be based on sentimental attachment (“It’s crooked and barely strong enough to hold my books, but it’s my bookshelf!”) or on self-delusion (“This bookshelf is easily as nice as the $500 version at Design Within Reach!”).

IN KEEPING WITH Aunt Eva and the art theme, Mike, Daniel, and I set off to visit a local art store in search of experimental material. Figuring that clay and paint were a bit too messy, we decided to base our first experiment on the Japanese art of origami. A few days later, we set up an origami booth in the student center at Harvard and offered students the opportunity to create either an origami frog or an origami crane (which were of similar complexity). We also told the participants that their finished creations would technically belong to us but that we would give them the opportunity to bid for their origami in an auction.

We told participants that they were going to bid against a computer using a special method called the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure (named after its inventors), which we then explained to them in minute detail. In short, a computer would spit out a random number after the participant made his or her bid for the item. If the participant’s bid was higher than the computer’s, they would receive the origami and pay the price set by the computer. On the other hand, if a participant’s bid was lower than the computer’s, they would not pay a thing nor receive the origami. The reason we used this procedure was to ensure that it was in the participant’s best interest to bid the highest amount that they were willing to pay for their origami—not a penny more or less.*

One of the first people to approach the booth was Scott, an eager third-year political science major. After explaining the experiment and the rules of the auction, we provided him with the instructions for creating both the frog and the crane (see the figure on the following page). If you happen to have appropriate paper handy, feel free to try it yourself.


Origami instructions

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Scott, whom we put into the creator condition, carefully followed the instructions, making sure each fold matched the diagram. In the end, he had made a very passable origami frog. When we asked what he would bid for it (using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure), he paused and then said firmly, “Twenty-five cents.” His bid was very close to the average bid in the creator condition, which was 23 cents.

Just then another student named Jason wandered up to the table and looked at Scott’s little creation. “What would you bid for this frog?” the experimenter asked. Since Jason was just a passerby, he was in the noncreator condition; his job was simply to tell us how much he valued Scott’s creation. Jason picked up the folded paper and examined its well-formed head and uneven legs. He even pushed it on its backside to make it jump a little. Finally, his bid for the frog (again using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure) was 5 cents, which was the average for those in the noncreator condition.

There was a distinct difference in valuation between the two conditions. The noncreators, like Jason, saw amateurish crumples of paper that looked more like folded mutations created by an evil scientist in a basement laboratory. At the same time, the creators of those crumples clearly imbued them with worth. Still, we did not know from this difference in bidding what caused the disparity in evaluations. Did the creators simply enjoy the art of origami in general, while the noncreators (who did not get a chance to make origami) were indifferent to folded sheets of paper? Or did the participants in both conditions appreciate origami to the same degree, while the creators were deeply in love with their own particular creations? Put another way, did Scott and his cohorts fall in love with origami in general or just with their own creations?

To get an initial answer to these questions, we asked two origami experts to make frogs and cranes. Then we asked another group of noncreators to bid on their objectively gorgeous work. This time, the noncreators bid an average of 27 cents. The degree to which noncreators valued the professional-looking origami was very close to the bids made by Scott and his friends on their own amateurish art (23 cents) and much higher than the bids of the noncreators on the amateurish art (5 cents).

These results showed us that the creators had a substantial bias when evaluating their own work. Noncreators viewed the amateurish art as useless and the professional versions as much, much more exciting. In contrast, the creators saw their own work as almost as good as the experts’ origami. It seemed that the difference between creators and noncreators was not in how they viewed the art of origami in general but in the way that the creators came to love and overvalue their own creations.

In summary, these initial experiments suggest that once we build something, we do, in fact, view it with more loving eyes. As an old Arabic saying goes, “Even the monkey, in his mother’s eyes, is an antelope.”

Customization, Labor, and Love

At the birth of the automotive industry, Henry Ford quipped that any customer could have a Model T painted any color that they wanted so long as it was black. Producing cars in just one color kept costs low so that more people could afford them. As manufacturing technology evolved, Ford was able to produce different makes and models without adding too much to their cost.

Fast-forward to today, when you can find millions of products to suit your taste. For example, you can’t walk down Fifth Avenue in New York without being amazed by the wonderful and weird women’s shoe styles in the window displays. But as more and more companies invite customers to take part in product design, this model is also changing. Thanks to improvements in Internet technology and automation, manufacturers are allowing customers to create products that fit their individual idiosyncrasies.

Consider Converse.com, a Web site where you can design your own casual sneakers. After you pick the style of shoe you want (generic or selected designer low tops, high tops, extrahigh tops) and the material (canvas, leather, suede), you then enjoy a round of paint by numbers. You pick from a palette of colors and patterns, point to a part of the shoe (inner body, rubber sidewall, laces), and decorate each part to your liking. By allowing you to design your shoes to suit your taste, Converse gives you not only a product that you really like but one that is unique to you.

More and more companies are getting in on the customization act. You can design your own kitchen cabinetry, build your own Local Motors car, create your own shoes, and more. If you follow the common arguments in favor of this kind of tailoring, you might think that the ideal type of customization Web site is one that is clairvoyant—one that quickly figures out what your ideal shoe might be and delivers it to you with as little effort as possible on your part. As cool as this may sound, if you used such an efficient tailoring process, you would miss out on the benefits of the IKEA effect, in which, through investment of thought and effort, we come to love our creations much more.

Does this mean that companies should always require their customers to do the design work and labor on every product? Of course not. There is a delicate trade-off between effortlessness and investment. Ask people to expend too much effort, and you can drive them away; ask them for too little effort, and you are not providing the opportunities for customization, personalization, and attachment. It all depends on the importance of the task and on the personal investment in the product category. For me, a paint-by-numbers approach to shoes or a jigsaw-puzzle-style toy chest strikes the right balance; anything less would not tap into my desire for the IKEA effect, and anything more would make me give up. As companies start to understand the true benefits of customization, they might start generating products that allow customers to express themselves and ultimately give them higher value and enjoyment.*

IN OUR NEXT experiment, we wanted to test whether the overvaluation by creators would persist if we removed all possibility of individual customization. So we had our participants construct a bird, duck, dog, or helicopter from prepackaged Lego sets. Using Lego sets achieved our no-tailoring objective because the participants were required to follow the instructions with no room for variation. That way, all the creations ended up looking exactly the same. As you probably expected, the creators were still willing to pay much more for their own work, despite the fact that their work was identical to the work made by the other creators.

The results of this experiment suggest that the effort involved in the building process is a crucial ingredient in the process of falling in love with our own creations. And though tailoring is an additional force that can further cause us to overvalue what we have built, we’ll overvalue it even without tailoring.

Understanding Overvaluation

The origami and Legos experiments taught us that we become attached to things that we invest effort in creating, and, once that happens, we start overvaluing these objects. Our next question was whether we are aware or unaware of our tendency to ascribe increased value to our beloved creations.

For example, think about your children. Assuming that you are like most parents, you think very highly of your own kids (at least until they enter the monster adolescent years). If you are unaware that you overvalue your own children, this will lead you to erroneously (and perhaps precariously) believe that other people share your opinion of your adorable, smart, and talented kids. On the other hand, if you were aware that you overvalue them, you would realize, with some pain, that other people don’t see them in the same glowing light as you do.

As a parent who frequently travels on airplanes, I get to experience this effect during the ritual of picture exchange. Once we’re up at a comfortable 30,000 feet, I pull out my laptop, on which I have lots of pictures and videos of my kids. Inevitably, the person next to me peeks at the screen. If I perceive even the slightest interest from my neighbor, I start with a slide show of my little boy and girl, who are obviously the most adorable children in the world. Of course, I assume that my neighbor notices how wonderful and unique they are, how charming their smiles, how cute they look in their Halloween costumes, and so on. Sometimes, after having so enjoyed watching my kids, my viewing buddy suggests that I look at pictures of his kids. A minute or two into the experience, I find myself wondering, “What is this guy thinking? I don’t want to sit here for twenty-five minutes looking at pictures of strange kids I don’t even know! I have work to do! When is this damn plane finally going to land?”

In reality, I suspect that very few people are either wholly unaware, or else completely aware, of their children’s gifts and faults, but I’ll bet that most parents are closer to the unaware philoprogenitive type (people who are inclined to favor their own children). This means that parents not only think that their kids are among the cutest things on the planet, they also believe that other people think so, too.

This is likely why O. Henry’s story “The Ransom of Red Chief” is so striking. In it, two thieves looking to turn a quick buck kidnap the child of a prominent Alabaman and demand a $2,000 ransom. The father refuses to pay the kidnappers, who quickly find out that the redheaded kid (Red Chief) actually enjoys being with them. Moreover, he is a terrible brat who likes to play pranks and make their lives miserable. The kidnappers lower their ransom, while Red Chief continues to drive them crazy. Finally the father offers to take the child back if the kidnappers pay him $250, and, despite Red Chief’s protest, they leave him and escape.

NOW IMAGINE YOU are a participant in another origami-building experiment. You’ve just finished creating your paper crane or frog, and it is now up for auction. You decide how much to bid on it and offer a decidedly high amount. Are you aware that you are overbidding and that other people will not see your creation as you do? Or do you also think that others share your affinity for your creation?

To find out, we compared the results of two different bidding procedures called first-price and second-price auctions. Without going too much into the technical differences,* if you were bidding using a second-price bidding procedure, you should carefully consider only how much you value your little paper creature.* In contrast, if you were bidding using a first-price bidding procedure, you should take into consideration both your own love for the object and how much you think others will bid for it. Why do we need this complexity? Here is the logic: if the creators realized that they were uniquely overimpressed with their own frogs and cranes, they would bid more when using the second-price auction (when only their value matters) than when using the first-price auction (when they should also take into account the values of others). In contrast, if the creators did not realize that they were the only ones who overvalued their origami and they thought that others shared their perspective, they would bid a similarly high amount in both bidding procedures.

So did the origami builders understand that others didn’t see their creations as they did? We found that creators bid the same amount when they considered only their own evaluation for the product (second-price auction) as when they also considered what noncreators would bid for it (first-price auction). The lack of difference between the two bidding approaches suggested not only that we overvalue our own creations but also that we are largely unaware of this tendency; we mistakenly think that others love our work as much as we do.

The Importance of Completion

Our experiments on creation and overvaluation reminded me of some skills I acquired while I was in the hospital. Among the many painful and annoying activities I had to endure (6:00 A.M. wake-ups for blood tests, excruciating bandage removal, nightmarish treatments, and so on), one of the least distressing but most boring activities was occupational therapy. For months, the occupational therapists put me in front of a table and would not let me leave until I finished placing 100 bolts on screws, sticking and unsticking pieces of wood covered with Velcro to other pieces of wood, placing pegs in holes, and other such mind-numbing tasks.

In the rehabilitation center across the hallway was an area for kids with difficult developmental problems who were taught different practical skills. In an effort to do things that were slightly more interesting than putting bolts on screws, I managed to join in on these more appealing activities. Over a period of a few months, I learned how to use a sewing machine, knit, and do some elementary woodwork. Given the difficulty I had with moving my hands, these tasks were not easy. My creations did not always come out as planned, but I did work very hard to create something. By engaging in all of these activities, I changed the occupational therapy from a dreadful, boring part of the day to something I looked forward to. Although the occupational therapists tried periodically to get me to return to the mind-numbing tasks—presumably because their physiological therapeutic value might have been somewhat higher—the pleasure and pride I derived from creating something was on a different order of magnitude altogether.

My biggest success was with the sewing machine, and over time I made some pillowcases and funky clothes for my friends. My sewing creations were like the amateurish origami of our participants. The corners of the pillowcases were not sharp, and the shirts I made were misshapen, but I was nevertheless proud of them (I was especially proud of a blue-and-white Hawaiian-style shirt that I made for my friend Ron Weisberg). After all, I had invested an incredible amount of effort in making them.

That was more than twenty years ago, but I still remember very clearly the shirts I made, the different steps in their creation, and the final outcome. In fact, my attachment to my creations was so strong that I was somewhat surprised when, a few years ago, I asked Ron if he remembered the shirt I’d made for him. Though I recalled it vividly, he had only a vague memory of it.

I ALSO REMEMBER other creations I worked on in the rehabilitation center. I tried to weave a carpet, sew a jacket, and make a set of wooden chess pieces. I started those projects with much enthusiasm and invested a lot of effort in them, but I found that they were beyond my ability and left them half done. Interestingly, when I reflect on those incomplete creations, I realize that I have no particular affection for them. Somehow, despite the incredible amount of effort I invested in their unfinished creation, I did not end up loving those partially made objets d’art.

My recollections of the rehabilitation center make me wonder if it is important to complete a project in order to overvalue it. In other words, in order to enjoy the IKEA effect, is it necessary for our efforts to result in success, even if that success simply means that the project was finished?

According to our reasoning behind the IKEA effect, more effort imbues greater valuation and appreciation. This means that to increase your feelings of pride and ownership in your daily life, you should take a larger part in creating more of the things you use in your daily life. But what if just investing effort is not enough? What if completion is also a crucial ingredient for attachment? If this is the case, we should think not only about all the objects that we might end up loving but also about the rickety shelves, bad artwork, and lopsided ceramic vases that are likely to sit unfinished in the garage for years.

To find out whether completion is a crucial ingredient for falling in love with our own creations, Mike, Daniel, and I conducted an experiment similar to our original origami study, but with an important addition: we introduced the element of failure. We went about this by creating another set of origami instructions that—not unlike my IKEA instructions—withheld some important information.

To give you a better idea, try the instructions we gave the participants in the difficult condition. Cut a normal 8½-by-11-inch sheet of paper into an 8½-by-8½-inch square and follow the instructions on the opposite page.

If your frog looks more like an accordion that has been run over by a truck, don’t feel bad. About half of the participants who received these difficult instructions managed to create some odd-looking creation, while the rest didn’t even manage to get that far and ended up with only an unduly folded sheet of paper.

If you compare these difficult instructions to the easy instructions for the original origami experiment (see page 92), you can easily identify the missing information. Participants in the difficult condition didn’t know that an arrow with a little hatch mark at the end meant “repeat” or that an arrow with a triangle point meant “unfold.”


Origami instructions (somewhat more complex)

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After running this experiment for a while, we had three groups: one that got the easy instructions and completed their task; a second group that worked with the difficult instructions yet somehow managed to complete the task; and a third group faced with the difficult instructions that failed to complete their task. Did the people in the difficult condition, who, by definition, had to work harder, value their unfortunate creations more than those who more easily and successfully turned out decent-looking cranes and frogs? And how did those who struggled with the difficult set of instructions but managed to complete the task compare with those who worked hard at it but didn’t succeed?

We found that those who successfully completed their origami in the difficult condition valued their work the most, much more than those in the easy condition. In contrast, those in the difficult condition who did not manage to finish their work valued their results the least, much less than those in the easy condition. These results imply that investing more effort does, indeed, increase our affection, but only when the effort leads to completion. When the effort is unfruitful, affection for one’s work plummets. (This is also why playing hard to get can be a successful strategy in the game of love. If you put an obstacle in the way of someone you like and they keep on working at it, you’re bound to make that person value you even more. On the other hand, if you drive that person to extremes and persist in rejecting them, don’t count on staying “just friends.”)

Labor and Love

Our experiments demonstrated four principles of human endeavor:

• The effort that we put into something does not just change the object. It changes us and the way we evaluate that object.

• Greater labor leads to greater love.

• Our overvaluation of the things we make runs so deep that we assume that others share our biased perspective.

• When we cannot complete something into which we have put great effort, we don’t feel so attached to it.

In light of these findings, we might want to revisit our ideas about effort and relaxation. The simple economic model of labor states that we are like rats in a maze; any effort we put into doing something removes us from our comfort zone, creating undesirable effort, frustration, and stress. If we buy into this model, it means that our paths to maximize our enjoyment in life should focus on trying to avoid work and increase our immediate relaxation. That’s probably why many people think that the ideal vacation involves lying lazily on an exotic beach and being served mojitos.

Similarly, we think we will not enjoy assembling furniture, so we buy the ready-made version. We want to enjoy movies in surround sound, but we imagine the stress involved in trying to connect a four-speaker stereo system to a television, so we hire somebody else do it for us. We like sitting in a garden but don’t want to get sweaty and dirty digging up a garden space or mowing the lawn, so we pay a gardener to cut the grass and plant some flowers. We want to enjoy a nice meal, but shopping and cooking are too much trouble, so we eat out or just pop something into the microwave.

Sadly, in surrendering our effort in these activities, we gain relaxation, but we may actually give up a lot of deep enjoyment because, in fact, it’s often effort that ultimately creates long-term satisfaction. Of course, it might be that others can do better wiring work or gardening (in my case, this is certainly true), but you might ask yourself, “How much more will I enjoy my new television/stereo setup/garden/meal after I work on it?” If you suspect you would enjoy it more, maybe those are cases where investing more effort will pay off.

And what about IKEA? Sure, its furniture is sometimes hard to put together, and the instructions can be difficult to follow. But since I value the “Semi-Homemade” approach to furniture, I am going to expend some sweat while I screw in some bolts. I’ll probably get annoyed from time to time while I am assembling my next bookcase, but in the end, I’ll hope to fall in love with the modern-art furniture I’ve made and reap higher enjoyment dividends over the long run.