Validation and Evidence

The IKEA effect

The more you build it, the harder it becomes to judge it. That is ordinary human wiring, and it stays switched on even once you know about it, which is why the fix is about timing. Willpower is the wrong tool.

The study

In 2012 Norton, Mochon and Ariely published work on what they named the IKEA effect. People were willing to pay about 63 percent more for something they had assembled themselves than for the identical item assembled by someone else.

One detail matters more than the headline: the effect held only for items people finished. Partly built and then abandoned, it disappeared.

What that means for your own work

Your effort goes into your valuation of the thing, and it stays there afterwards. The hours are in there. A buyer compares your product to the alternatives. You compare it to the empty space that was there before you spent four months.

Which is why the timing is the problem

Month four is the worst possible time to ask whether anyone wants this. It is also, reliably, when people start asking, because that is when it feels ready enough to show.

By then the answer you are able to hear has narrowed. You will find the encouraging reading of an ambiguous response, because you have four months in the valuation and they stay there.

The practical move

Ask before the build, and decide in advance what answer would stop you. A test you design while you are still neutral is worth more than a test you design once you are invested, and you are only neutral once.

Source: Norton, Mochon and Ariely, Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2012.