Many of us love to put together shelves, dressers, bookcases, and cribs. It gives us a feeling of accomplishment; we have contributed our sweat and hard work to making our lives better. So where do we go if we want to do this? There are many places of course, but the largest store is IKEA. And here in Indianapolis we now have our own IKEA store which makes this mind trip perfect.
But do we always put together the items correctly? Do we care if they are a little crooked or a shelf is upside down? No – we love them because we worked so hard on putting them together. Did you know that this a real psychological condition known as “The IKEA Effect.”
Daniel Mochon, Tulane University, Michael Norton, Harvard Business School, and Dan Ariely, Duke University, conducted experiments were they “demonstrated that people attach greater value to things they built than if the very same product was built by someone else. And in new experiments published recently, they’ve discovered why it happens: Building your own stuff boosts your feelings of pride and competence, and also signals to others that you are competent.” (Source)
You might be asking why is this so important? Because there is real significance to this effect. “The world over, companies and managers fall in love with their own ideas — and reject better ideas from the outside because they were not designed in-house. “If I am sticking to a project and I have been working on it for a year or two, I might think this project really is a good idea,” Mochon said. “So while someone external might look at my project and say, ‘You know, that’s a failed project, I’m not sure you should be spending time on it,’ because it is the fruit of my own labor, because of the Ikea Effect, I might think that it is much better than it really is.”(Source)