The IKEA Effect: Why Effort Makes Things Feel More Valuable

You probably know the feeling: you spend hours assembling a piece of IKEA furniture, curse at the instruction manual, and somehow end up irrationally proud of your wobbly creation. It’s not logic — it’s psychology. Researchers call this the IKEA Effect: a cognitive bias that makes us overvalue things we’ve put effort into, even when they’re objectively imperfect.

The Hidden Psychology Behind “Do-It-Yourself” Pride

The term was coined by behavioral economists Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely in a 2011 Harvard Business School paper. In their experiments, participants who built IKEA boxes and origami figures rated their own work as more valuable than identical, professionally made versions. The more effort they invested, the more worth they perceived.

Effort Equals Ownership

The brain links effort with attachment. When we invest physical or mental energy into something, the reward centers of our brain — particularly those involving dopamine — activate more strongly. It’s the same mechanism that makes home-cooked meals taste better or self-written to-do lists feel more satisfying to tick off.

This response isn’t purely sentimental; it’s tied to our evolutionary wiring. Effort signaled survival — the harder you worked for something, the more valuable it became to your brain’s internal economy. Today, that same instinct lingers, whether you’re assembling a desk or designing a product launch.