Michael Norton

Who they are

Norton works on happiness, spending and the psychology of valuation.

The 2011 paper, with Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely, had participants assemble IKEA storage boxes, fold origami and build Lego, then value their own output against output made by somebody else. People saw their amateurish creations as similar in value to experts' creations, and expected other people to agree with them.

The second half is what makes it a good paper. When participants built and then destroyed their creations, or failed to complete them, the effect dissipated. That makes successful completion the condition, not effort, and it is the part of the finding that commercial writing about it consistently drops.

Key papers

Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2011). "The IKEA effect: when labor leads to love." Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 453-460. First author. Four studies.

Key ideas

Completion, not effort. See The IKEA Effect.

The misjudgement is social. Participants expected others to share their inflated valuation, which is the detail with commercial consequences.

The mechanism is open. A 2017 developmental study found the effect not moderated by amount of effort in young children, and also found ownership alone unable to explain it, proposing a creation-to-self-concept link instead. See Psychological Ownership.

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