The harder the initiation, the more new members end up loving the group

In a 1959 experiment, women who endured an embarrassing 'severe' initiation to join a discussion group rated it far more interesting afterward than women who got in easily — even though every group's actual discussion was identical and dull. Suffering for something makes us value it more, if only to justify the suffering.

— Elliot Aronson, Judson Mills, The Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group — Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1959