Are you ready?
Am I ready to build your furniture for you?
Yes!
What a friend.
What’s funny is you have no idea what you’ve got yourself into.
[BrainCraft intro]
Wait so you’re telling me people like doing this?
There are psychological reasons why people like their furniture more when they’ve built
it from a flat pack.
So it isn’t that they like building it, it’s that after they’ve built it, they
love it.
Yes.
Okay, so there’s this bias called the IKEA Effect – where people place a higher value
on items they build themselves compared to items they did not construct.
And since I’d recently ordered new furniture, I thought I’d put this IKEA Effect into
practice.
Would I really like the table I did build more than a similar one that I didn’t?
Also, I kinda wanted some help.
I thought we were going to build one thing, like a night table.
Something simple.
How do you build a chair?
And this is Joanna Hausmann: Comedian, YouTuber, Master Builder.
So the IKEA effect was actually named by three psychologists –
Recently, I’m assuming?
In 2011.
So not the company, at all.
But it basically states that you place more value on things that you have constructed,
or partially assembled.
In a series of studies, when participants built complete IKEA products, LEGO sets and
origami, they compared their amateurish creations to those of experts, and expected others to
share their opinions.
This idea of over-valuing DIY efforts goes back to the 1950s, when you combined cake
mix just with water – it didn’t really feel like you were cooking.
As soon as companies added an egg to the recipe, popularity soared.
You’re still not really baking…
Oh wow.
Except there is no sweet ending to this for me.
Well…
These are just chairs!
That are already assembled What I love about this particular IKEA Effect
is that we just had to open the box.
Do you sometimes wonder where scientists are coming from when they write these things in
research papers?
There was definitely one scientist who just moved and had to build a bunch of crap for
his apartment and he’s like, I mean, I gotta write something!
I spent four days trying to build a night table!
Let’s call it: The IKEA Effect
Now, we all know that building flat pack furniture isn’t always straightforward
Okay, step one: take an allen key and put a screw in the hole.
Oh we can do that.
Oh my god I want to cry!
This is so hard!
Hey!
I’m here to guide you through it.
Yep, I got this.
Oh, look at that!
Look at this!
I already feel like I accomplished something today.
And this extra time and energy often leads to more time and energy
There’s one thing called the Sunk Cost Effect – and that’s when you put a lot of effort
into something, but it’s not going so well, you just keep dumping resources into it.
Oh wow!
That sounds a lot like my life.
The Sunk Cost Effect is believed to contribute to the overall IKEA Effect
So the IKEA Effect like paper or study came out in 2011, has there been more research?
There was actually one study that came out in January of this year – 2018 if you’re
playing along at home – that looked at this effect in kids, and how kids have ownership
of different things and how kids value their possessions.
Obviously I don’t value my possessions.
Wait, so if they build a LEGO doll – Specifically a foam monster, where you get
like that foam paper and then you can cut it up into a monster shape and you can put
googly eyes on it and glitter –
I love them!
Yeah, foam monsters.
I want that one!
I’m kinda attached to this one, it looks like a dinosaur.
They had two groups of kids between 3-6 and one group of kids built their own foam monster
and the other group was just given a monster.
And then they looked at how the kid valued the monster, whether it wanted to take it
home, all these different things; and what it found is this IKEA effect and this sense
of ownership is developed in-between 4 and 5.
So this is actually a lesson on child development.
There’s this other effect called the Endowment Effect, which is basically where you view
your possessions as an extension of yourself.
And that is what seems to happen between 4-5 years old.
You know what would have been more fun than building a bookshelf is building a foam monster.
So maybe next time, we can do that instead.
Now, after a couple of months of using this furniture, I don’t really appreciate it
or value it any more a similar table I already had.
This doesn’t mean the IKEA effect doesn’t exist – there are MANY EFFECTS in psychology
and they have different magnitudes.
They can be stronger in certain situations, they affect some people more than others and
it’s tricky to figure out how the effect size in a study translates to your everyday
life.
But the coolest thing about the IKEA effect is that we’ve just discovered when the ideas
of ownership and effort justification emerge.
So putting aside the IKEA Effect and whether or not we like this table more or not because
we cried over it, at the very least we learned that there’s a part in our development,
in our growth, in which our brain creates this feeling of attachment to objects.
And that it is a reflection of ourselves.
Like this table is a reflection of… my perfection.
And I think that’s Joanna’s sweet ending.
One more thing – please check out Joanna’s channel and subscribe because I coerced her
into building my IKEA Furniture.
She posts hilarious vlogs on race, language, culture and today – your Bilingual Brain
with me.
Go on!