Building something yourself makes you value it more, even if you did a mediocre job

In a 2011 study, people who assembled their own IKEA boxes, origami figures or Lego sets rated their wobbly creations nearly as highly as experts' pre-built versions, and were willing to pay almost as much for them. Researchers named it the IKEA effect: the labour that goes into making something increases attachment to it.

— Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, Dan Ariely, The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love — Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2011

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