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The IKEA effect is our tendency to value things more when we have made them ourselves. In a 2011 study, people who assembled a simple IKEA storage box were willing to pay about 63% more for it than people who were shown the same box already built.

Psychology

Mind

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The effect was named by Michael Norton of Harvard Business School, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely, who asked volunteers to build IKEA boxes, fold origami and put together Lego sets. People who folded their own origami valued their clumsy frogs and cranes about as highly as other people valued figures made by experts, and expected everyone else to agree. The boost appeared only when the job was finished: people who built something and then took it apart, or never completed it, did not show it. The finding fits older research on effort justification, the tendency to value whatever has cost us effort. The researchers pointed to Build-A-Bear Workshop, where customers pay to stuff their own teddy bears, as a business built on the effect. The same pride can make it harder to see the flaws in our own work.

Türkçe oku
IKEA etkisi, insanın kendi eliyle yaptığı şeye daha çok değer vermesidir. 2011'de yayımlanan bir çalışmada, basit bir IKEA saklama kutusunu kendisi kuranlar, aynı kutuyu hazır kurulmuş görenlere göre ona yaklaşık %63 daha fazla para vermeye razıydı.

Etkiye adını Harvard İşletme Okulu'ndan Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon ve Dan Ariely verdi. Araştırmacılar gönüllülere IKEA kutuları kurdurdu, origami katlattı, Lego setleri yaptırdı. Origamisini kendi katlayanlar, acemice yaptıkları kurbağa ve turnalara, başkalarının usta işi figürlere biçtiği kadar değer biçti; üstelik herkesin aynı fikirde olacağını sandı. Etki yalnızca iş bittiğinde ortaya çıktı: Yaptığını söken ya da yarım bırakanlarda görülmedi. Bulgu, psikolojideki daha eski bir gözlemle de örtüşür: İnsan, uğruna emek harcadığı şeyi daha değerli bulur. Araştırmacılar, müşterilerin kendi oyuncak ayısını doldurmak için para ödediği Build-A-Bear mağazalarını bu etki üzerine kurulmuş bir işe örnek gösterdi. Aynı gurur, insanın kendi işindeki kusurları görmesini de zorlaştırabilir.

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Illustration of a potter at work.

Background reading: IKEA effect
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