How the IKEA Effect Reveals Biases in Our Brain and Decision Making
July 29, 2025Categories: Psychology and Bias, Podcast Episode
The Biased Brain Podcast with Owen Hawthorne
Explore the intriguing world of cognitive biases and human cognition in this engaging podcast. Discover how bias in decision making shapes our perceptions and influences our choices. Join us as we delve into the science behind critical thinking and biases, providing practical insights to enhance your understanding and control over your thought processes. Whether you're a psychology student or curious observer, this podcast offers valuable tools to help you unveil the hidden biases in your mind.
The IKEA Effect: Why We Love What We Build Ourselves
Hey, have you ever noticed how much more you tend to treasure something you put together yourself, even if it isn’t perfect? Maybe it’s a piece of furniture, a craft project, or even a recipe you’ve tinkered with. This is actually a well-documented psychological phenomenon called the IKEA Effect, and today I want to chat about the experiments behind it and why our brains seem to work that way.
So, the IKEA Effect was named after the famous Swedish furniture company, IKEA, because their products almost always require some assembling. Researchers started noticing that people not only appreciate their self-assembled furniture more, but they often value it way beyond its actual market worth. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s rooted in human cognition and how our minds attach value to effort.
The pioneering studies were conducted by Michael Norton and his colleagues in the early 2010s. Here’s what they did: participants were asked to assemble simple objects like IKEA furniture pieces or LEGO sets. Then, they were asked to either keep those items, rate them, or trade them for something else. What the researchers found was fascinating—people significantly overvalued the things they had put effort into building compared to identical objects that were pre-assembled for them.
Why does this happen? It’s tied to something deeper about our psychology and the way effort influences value perception. When we invest time and energy into something, our brains tend to increase its subjective worth. This is a perfect example of bias in decision making, where the emotional attachment we build clouds our objective judgment. It’s like our brain is rewarding our effort by making us “love” the object more. You could say it’s part of the biased brain at work, helping us feel good about our accomplishments.
Now, this isn’t just about furniture. The IKEA Effect spills over into various parts of life—projects at work, hobbies, relationships, and even problem-solving. It's a reminder of how critical thinking and biases interplay. We often think we're being logical, but these cognitive biases quietly steer us towards decisions that make us feel proud of our effort, sometimes regardless of the actual outcome or quality.
- Experiment One: Participants built IKEA boxes or LEGO sets. Those who assembled their own objects were willing to pay more to keep them than those who were given the finished product.
- Experiment Two: People even felt more connected emotionally to handmade items, suggesting this effect also feeds into our sense of identity.
- Experiment Three: When effort was introduced artificially, like when participants worked on a neutral task unrelated to the object, the effect was less pronounced, highlighting that the effort must be meaningful to trigger this bias.
This all ties back neatly to The Biased Brain by Bo Bennett, PhD, a fantastic book that explores understanding cognitive biases and how they shape our perceptions and decisions every single day. If you want to get clearer on why your brain acts the way it does—especially around things like bias in decision making and the subtle ways your effort influences your feelings—this book is a great resource to start sorting through it all.
So next time you’re wrestling with assembling that tricky IKEA bookshelf or putting together any project, keep in mind that your brain is probably already boosting how much you’ll value it. It’s a little trick of human cognition that engineers your sense of pride and identity through effort. Recognizing this can help when weighing your decisions more objectively or understanding your attachment to certain things.
If you find this stuff interesting and want to dig deeper into critical thinking and biases, explore the book and unravel the secrets of your mind today! It’s a great way to get a better grip on your own biased brain and find ways to make smarter, more balanced decisions regardless of how much effort you put in.
Thanks for listening, and maybe next time you build something yourself, you’ll appreciate it a little more knowing why your brain works that way!
