by Dan Ariely
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.”
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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 ma
ny 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.