I will add a related effect - the "find" effect. I have been remarkably attached to furniture I have picked up off the side of the road or bought at some cheap second-hand store for next to nothing. The thill of finding something valuable for almost zero makes the item worth far more to me than its intrinsic value.
The more upmarket version of this is buying antique (or vintage) furniture at auction. The hunt to find the "perfect" piece makes the attachment so much stronger when you actually get it.
I do agree with you. I think in this case the elaborate search replaces the "ikea assembling" part.
Finding the perfect second hand piece is a very rewarding feeling. Even when the item itself has some minor flaws, which you the consider part of its "charm", something you would never accept from a brand new item.
Plus this second-hand hunt is much more rewarding than zombie-strolling through an Ikea store.
Aw man, if you're zombie-strolling, you're missing out on the fun. IKEA can be a grand time if you do it right. Since they lay out realistic homes, you can play house! Invent some characters and act out a scene with your friend or spouse.
I’d say there’s a bit of this “finders feeling” when hunting for limited release electronics/sneakers on launch day (if they’re for you and not to $flip). Not quite so much anymore with all of the pre-order options available these days.
When it comes to vintage clothing, there's also the feeling that what I have is relatively unique. It is highly unlikely that anyone has the exact same item. It is impossible to replace.
That's a reason why [some] people love to craft their own clothes, or parts of their clothes. To add a unique flavour in which they themselves put effort into.
The only attachment I have to furniture is the aversion to the amount of effort required from me to do anything about them (moving, upgrading, disposing). Things would be different if they were small and light. So even a badly assembled ikea furniture will do, not because it is the precious fruit of my labour, just because it’s too much work to do something about it.
I think people are biased towards things that required (or contain some form of) some input from their side.
Robert Cialdini, in his famous book - "Psychology of persuasion", talks about an extreme version of such an effect in the case of Fraternities and Hazing where the members of fraternities display a greater commitment and respect towards their respective fraternity even though they might have had to go through a harsh and humiliating initiation process.
In this sense, IKEA effect, "find" effect, "my kid is the best" effect etc can all be traced to a common ancestor phenomena.
I know the watermelon which has been honestly come by and I know the taste of the watermelon which has been acquired by art. Both taste good, but the experienced know which tastes best. -- Mark Twain
I don't see how that effect matters in IKEA but not equally less or more in other furniture shops.
Rather, that's a far more important factor when it comes to charity shop / thrift shop, or the more expensive version as you mentioned: antique/vintage shop or auction.
What is to be had by calling this a 'cognitive bias'? That is to assume a prior and universal value-set. In matter of fact, it is perfectly natural for people to value their own creative activity. That is central to what it is to be a human.
People are not aware that they would behave this way.
> Researchers then priced the items the experimenters had assembled as well as pre-assembled IKEA furniture. The results showed that the subjects were willing to pay 63% more for the former than for the latter.
And it's clearly not rational. As long as you assign positive value to your time.
> And it's clearly not rational. As long as you assign positive value to your time.
I would say it is hard to live a good life if you don't value the things you create.
It is interesting to see that people weren't able to predict this behavior. However, people are unable to predict many of their own behaviors, so that isn't a damning result by itself.
Does it justify being called a creative activity? It doesn't for me. I've just taken down the cot and stairgate I put up a few days earlier for the family visit. Those each took about the same effort but as it's the only option it's both the least and most creative way to deal with a temporary cot and stairgate.
Interesting that it's named after IKEA. I had to think of Edward Bernays while reading the description. The guy who shaped PR like no one else came up with the idea to sell ready to bake mixes that only required you to add one egg to make a cake. He argued that housewives would feel better about themselves when they don't buy a done cake.
It wasn’t that housewives didn’t want a completed cake. They didn’t want to use a mix that only required water because it didn’t feel like they actually made a cake. Adding the egg made it feel like more care went into it.
I recently bought a 3D printer and feel the same "Ikea effect" as well. My wife comments how I spent (over the holidays) a disproportionate amount of time tinkering and declogging the nozzle to make items I could have otherwise purchased at the dollar store.
I've seen this false attribution effect in software design too. "Let's use kanban instead of scrum to build this new platform with a stack that fits our business better being built by the two senior engineers we've since hired."
Oh look, the new platform is coming along great, all glory to kanban.
Wow, never heard of this. My experience has been the exact opposite. Even though I've built tons of Ikea furniture I've always considered it disposable. Most of it is not made to last a single move. Some of them might survive if you disassemble them before hand. I've been proud to have built it but that pride never translated to any attachment.
I don't believe they are supposed to, in spite of the romantic marketing spin around the whole "he saw the legs off the table" shtick. They are, however, designed to be easily transported throughout the whole logistic chain up to the customer's home and to be easily assembled by everyone without specialized tools. However, some pieces of furniture require destructive build steps that aren't supposed to ever be undone, such as driving nails onto cardboard parts or driving wood screws onto particle board components, and the end result isn't exactly ready to be shipped across town in the back of a moving truck.
They are disposable because of the low price, but they are sturdy. I own several Ikea furniture for nearly two decades, and they have done just fine even after being abused. Most pieces survive moving, with or without dissassembly. I do not remember losing any piece if not for getting tired of it, and giving it away or selling it.
Bigger pieces like big cupboards can be more fragile, but nearly any other brand would also be fragile - except maybe massive wood pieces, very heavy and not able to be dissassembled, and very expensive by comparisson.
Some very cheap ones in the lowest price brackets would definitely have a hard time surviving moving (hell a sofa I had barely survived being used), but climb up the price ladder and there's very sturdy stuff to be had. Also, over here at least, when you move up the price range you notice that other furniture increasingly becomes competitive and that IKEA == cheap doesn't come up as automatically true.
I agree, I think there is a level where this is true, and it is at the absolute bottom (like $15 nightstand level), but if you move slightly up from those "lines" the build is a bit better. No, you aren't going to hand them down to your kids, but I have some fairly cheap ikea furniture in my bedroom that survived two moving trucks just fine.
And one thing about them...they are generally much lighter than solid wood "real" furniture - so the actual process of moving them is easier and generally less prone to damage in the first place.
It was the lowest priced sofa at the time (~100€), and my elbow went right through the armrest on the third day. It felt like it was made of cardboard. Helpful as a temporary consumable, and probably extremely recyclable.
> And one thing about them...they are generally much lighter than solid wood "real" furniture - so the actual process of moving them is easier and generally less prone to damage in the first place.
Both weight and (dis)assembly are a great thing indeed: I mostly have IKEA furniture, mainly because the staircase leading to my apartment is crazy steep and tight!
Check out Lundia bookshelf system. Totally assemblable and customizable by yourself. Wood frame, steel stringers. Very light. Selection of components is large. You can have different widths, heights, colors. Doors, clothes drawers etc. Practically eternal functionally.
IKEA seems to cover a range from "shitty and disposable" to "surprisingly sturdy," and opinions of the brand understandably vary depending on which end you've mostly encountered.
Could this be applied to software? Building Linux from Scratch was awesome experience for me, even if I didn't write a line of code and just followed instructions (actually I wrote my own init scripts). I used that Linux for a year after that. But I'm technical person, so complete noob probably won't be able to do that. Something like installing a program to a proper place by extracting and copying few files and doing few registry tweaks to make it work may be?
I don't feel this at all. As someone who is an actual "maker", I have to design something before I feel that I made it.
IKEA is just rudimentary assembly. You don't have to reshape any material in IKEA assembly. You don't have to follow any blueprint to cut or drill anything out of raw stock. If you have any sort of skill and tools for that sort of thing, they lie idle.
There was the one time I had to re-drill holes that were off. My already low regard for the item sank as a result.
The effect is probably for the layman who doesn't usually build things, so when they finally build something (which is a human built-in dopamin effect, humans love building
things), they are attached to it.
However, when you're an engineer and build things daily, it's more of a nuisance than a joy.
Most of these types of psychological effects are disconnected from logical reasoning and work even if you are aware of them and try to account for them. For example, pricing something at $9.99 instead of $10.00. Studies have shown that when people are perfectly aware of why this is done, it still has the desired effect.
However, I do value things I've actually made more than they are really worth. It's the sense of "this is a one of a kind item made by hand; nothing exactly like it". (Even though it could be mass produced in very good quality, perhaps even better, at lower cost).
That's kind of the "IKEA effect", but I don't see how you can get it from putting together a few mass produced IKEA parts. There is just about zero room to put any "you" into it.
See, that's the basis of the effect - it only works if the person has subjectively put in at least some (qualitative and quantitative!) level of perceived effort into it.
You most likely just don't reach this level of effort needed when assembling IKEA furniture.
I get this with Open Source software too. This isn't a slant on the quality., but even when it would be much cheaper and lest time consuming to get the commercial option.. I stick putting the last few screws in of whatever OS solution I'm putting together. I just can't help it, I love that feeling of "I built this". (Even if sometimes it was only configuring a few settings/putting screws in.)
Yeah, Gentoo would be a great and obvious example of that, as well as BSD ports collection which had to be compiled by yourself back in the days. Or baking your own *.deb or adding your own APT repositories. Building your own Raspberry Pi even though its a guide. Using an iFixit guide to repair hardware even though you're just following a guide. Lego without deviating from the guides. That kind of thing.
I love building IKEA furniture. For me, there is a certain controlled fear that comes with opening the boxes. I know it'll go together, because.. well, its not difficult, but there's always that lingering fear that it won't.
In regards to the egg in the instant mix (pancakes, cakes, etc), this is mentioned in Adam Curtis' 'The Century of the Self'[1], which is a fantastic documentary, and definitely worth a watch.
I've felt a different fear. I'm always afraid that a piece will be missing or not fit correctly. Nothing frustrates me more. I've never had the problem with Ikea, but I have with other furniture. You don't want to disassemble it, because if assembling it was a waste of time, disassembling it is makes my eyes bleed.
And replacing the missing or I'll fitting part is always more difficult than originally buying it. Plus the whole delayed gratification thing.
I do enjoy the end result though. Even though I know in reality I've done no great thing. :) But then I just sit down an write a program, and I feel better. :)
I find that ikea designs their furniture for the build process as well. I dread putting together any non-ikea assembly — but ikea has actually put thought into the process - and it all just works.
A month ago I put together a six-drawer dresser. Ikea was kind enough to gift me with two extra dowels.. which had me concerned at first... and still somewhat concerned.
I can put your mind at ease - every IKEA product I have ever assembled (and I’ve done houses full of them) is supplied with two extra dowels. I’d guess they occasionally split or something, and the cost must be so low it’s worth including them.
I believe they bias the packing process towards having extra pieces rather than missing pieces, since a few extra parts cost less than returns or sending out replacements.
Take it a step further and design your own stuff - find a hardware store that will cut everything to your specs and you can assemble it at home. It's very satisfying, higher quality and may even be cheaper if you already own some power tools. I remember Stock Vermeersch and Bauhaus fondly :D
I have never felt this fear. If the furniture doesn't go together then it's IKEA's fault and I'm sending it back. They've failed in their UX design. IKEA furniture needs to be easy enough for the common denominator to assemble, it's a significant part of their brand value.
I hate to assemble stuff (furniture comes first) because it does not teach me anything useful to me. I would pay someone to do the gardening, if I had to have a garden (the thought only makes me shiver).
OTOH I build electronic devices and program them even though I could buy something similar in a shop.
So I guess it comes down to what is interesting for whom, and it will wildly depend on the individual.
I have discovered that the kinds of housework I enjoy are that which is finite. Putting up towel bars or blinds? Pretty satisfying when all is said and done. Cutting the grass not so much because you just have to cut the damned grass again next week.
Look into alternatives to a lawn, maybe. If just for yhe optics, take a look at moss, which takes some water to grow, but apart from slightly lower walkability has little downsides.
I'm thinking next year I might just hire someone to cut it. Maybe having less grass would be good too. Part of my problem is my back yard is very hilly, making it grueling to do (not like you can just run across a few times and be done). I'm pretty new to home ownership.
Even with the fairly flat and modestly-sized parcel of property that I keep mowed around the house, it's just one of those tasks that I don't care to do and which needs to be done on a schedule. Some people find fairly mindless outdoor chores a good excuse to get out of the house but I don't generally speaking.
It's not inexpensive to have your lawn cut and the quality isn't always to my liking. But I've found the tradeoff to be worthwhile.
I tend to think of IKEA furniture as good enough to keep without getting emotionally invested. If I have to throw a piece away because of a move or breakage, I don't feel too bad about it.
That, and I like the design. Most of the stuff my parents and grandparents had, with turned legs and curves, was a real turnoff.
What I want from furniture is something that does it's job without calling attention to itself.
It does work, but most people don't know how to build a PC.
Unlike an IKEA set, there's no full list of parts to buy, you don't have a guide, it's not guaranteed that the parts work well together (even for someone with experience) and mis-assembly can render the whole thing useless.
You don't have to build very many PCs before finding yourself with a bad power supply or motherboard. (In my experience these two are the most common to be non-functional out of the box.) This can be frustrating enough even for someone who is experienced.
Or incompatibilities or drivers/firmware that need updated or... There's just a lot that can trip you up and I've run into a lot of quirks and issues over the years that--if I were just starting out--I'd just assume that I must be doing something wrong.
You need to know (and trust) those things. IKEA is a common brand and they deliver everything you need in 1 box or so. Biiiiiig difference for the common man.
If all of your parts are good from the start, I agree. But if you are building a computer for the first time and get just one bad part, it can be difficult to isolate where the problem is if you don't have a box full of spare parts you know are good that you can swap out one by one until you find the bad part.
Builders have always been a tiny slice of the market. But even for me, who has built many systems, when I needed a new Windows system last year, I ended up buying a 17" Alienware laptop just because it was easier, self-contained, and took up less space.
I got whatever the opposite of the IKEA effect is from building my last desktop PC, which, hopefully, will be the last PC I ever build. Aside from memory and maybe drives, I'll be buying off-the-rack from now on.
What I learned is that there is nothing special about a homebuilt PC, unless you want an odd case. Thanks to depreciation, there's not all that much special about OTR PC's, either.
There's indeed nothing special about a home-built PC, and while I don't particularly enjoy it (even though it's gotten much easier in the past 20 years), I still do it, since it's typically the only way to ensure:
* Properly sized cooling that keeps my PC silent under any kind of load. (I have to admit, Dell et al. have made decent progress there too, but that's mostly thanks to the great improvements in power management we've seen in the past decade).
* Optimal budget allocation.
* Exotic features (for instance, I built my current computer 2½ years ago, and there was only one mainboard on the market providing HDMI 2.0 with the Skylake iGPU).
If I weren't so cheap, I guess I would just order all the parts from a single store and pay for assembly.
Now, when it comes to recommending a computer to my family, I just tell them to buy a NUC/Brix.
for me, the IKEA effect is a different one: it is how things look incredibly fun, nice, well-desgined when you're in the shop (because the IKEA shop is so well agenced) and just dumb when you bring one home
The fact that there are some people who enjoy walking round the IKEA stores window shopping with no intention of buying anything is testament to how well designed their stores are.
Annoyingly, I had to take the longish hike to go to Ikea to pick some furniture up a week or so ago. And it was such a mob scene that I passed on the cafeteria.
To the broader point, they do make the store something of an experience which works especially well because there are relatively few stores so it's a bit of an expedition for many people to go to one.
I have a lot of IKEA stuff and build some of it myself or with other people, but I never had this feeling. More the feeling of annoyance. Once I had to go back because parts didn't fit. It takes awfully long time to assemble. A German TV show even made fun of the assembly instructions, when you put it the right way together the furniture would take over the world.
I used to contract transport with assembly when I bought IKEA items, just to avoid the hassle of assembling myself. After three or four pieces of furniture misassembled, I decided to assemble them myself in my next purchases. It was not cost-efficient but I discovered that I liked the idea of controlling the assembly process to ensure it was done with enough care.
Last time I assembled IKEA furniture I didn't have an electric screwdriver and it was exhausting. Some screws were very hard to twist and got stripped. I enjoy knowing that I completed it, but it wasn't interesting or pleasant.
I don't really understand how relevant the first picture 'Building a bicycle' is, which seems to be two young men, cutting up a bicycle frame with an electric jigsaw?
EDIT: I see, there has been some silliness in adding pictures here in the history
I certainly understand this in situations where you've done some significant work or build the thing from scratch, but I'm surprised to learn such a thing would take root with following the instructions to assemble furniture.
When I was a kid, the only thing I liked about LEGO was the fact that I didn't have to follow the instructions.
So I could turn the boring police station into a spaceship.
And the fire station into another spaceship.
And the indigo tropical island set into an alien world.
Then medical building, the random pirate lair, the galleon and the random 18th century fort into a pirate spaceship.
And then I'd dismantle the lot and make a gigantic mega-spaceship, with a diverse crew of police officers, pirates, Imperial British soldiers, island tribespeople, and firemen.
---------
Fast-forward to today: I assemble the IKEA furniture my partner wants, but I can't exactly get creative with it.
Oh, and since I'm commenting now, I will add that I also feel no attachment to the IKEA crap I assemble and the eponymous "effect" probably does exist, but should have been named differently.
> Oh, and since I'm commenting now, I will add that I also feel no attachment to the IKEA crap I assemble and the eponymous "effect" probably does exist, but should have been named differently.
The effect doesn't really mean that you are going to attach a lot of value to a 9-dollar table you mounted yourself. It means you're going to attach more value to it than if you had bought the same table already assembled.
I do not feel attached to it too. But I do prefer assembling kits than buying stuff preassembled. Instead of paying someone to do that, if I have time, I prefer the pleasure of doing it, at least a few times, and paying less (and probably costing less in shelf space and global economics).
I often wonder if electronics and mechanics shouldn't be done the same. So much is wasted from misuse and repairshop abuse from ignorance.
Hmmm, after reading this I thought maybe I should just buy a new macbook charger instead of creating a hand-cranked braiding machine from 3d-printed parts to replace the worn-down cable insulation on the current one.
Almost all of our furniture is from IKEA and I built all myself. I enjoyed the "building" part very much. I hate the furniture though. Generic shitty stuff.
I was surprised the article doesn’t mention “sweat equity” or “sunk cost.” Labor has value, even when you’re just building IKEA furniture or hunting for antiques. It makes sense that people place a higher value on their own labor than that of others, because the cost is intuitive.
The more upmarket version of this is buying antique (or vintage) furniture at auction. The hunt to find the "perfect" piece makes the attachment so much stronger when you actually get it.