Offhand, an understanding of the assembly and internal mechanics of a product from having built it would make me feel like I would be be more likely to be able to fix it if required.
From my own observations there two general reasons:
* Assembly is seen as [near] zero value add step, therefore self assembling is seen as an easy opportunity for savings, especially when assembly is actually sold service.
* People think that assembly is generally done by minimum wage employees coasting through the day and half assing tasks, therefore self assembly with a little bit of focus and dedication is seen to lead to higher than default assembly quality.
From "self assebled box" to "managers own idea", thats quite a jump.
There are lots of reasons why people push their own solutions. To stake a claim of expertise in an area, the need to impress peers and reports, genuine ignorance of other solutions...
Agreed. The benefits of their idea working out are huge, but so is the personal negative impact of it failing -- even if the outcome for the company is better.
A lot of people also find it really difficult to admit they were wrong, even to themselves. This means as an idea starts emerging as suboptimal, the people that came up with and championed it are going to be the last to see that, and will be pushing for it despite what look like clear flaws. This is probably better explained by the gambler's fallacy than Ikea effect, though.
There's an biological and evolutionary reason why humans have biases. The ideal of becoming completely unbiased and rational is not only impossible, but bad for you.
The person who was unbiased, the person who didn't feel the irrational ikea effect, did not survive to reproduce you. So trying to deny your natural tendencies and natural biases can also influence your survival.
You're saying evolution did not cause bias? That it's just a correlation? The fact that all people across the world across all cultures and demographics display typical human biases that follow extremely identical patterns is a correlation? Maybe. This is an not a testable experiment.
Every physical and mental aspect of your being is "caused" by your genetics which is again "caused" by natural selection... that is, in fact the theory of natural selection. To deny causation is to deny the theory of natural selection.
(this is a tangent, but some would argue that environment influences the mental aspect of your being... this is true but again, your genes build your brain and ultimately controls how your brain reacts to the environment... you are still ultimately a product of your genes)
I believe in natural selection, hence I believe that evolution "caused" bias to evolve in humans. That is why I think this. Does that answer your question?
Natural selection produces good enough results. It does not necessarily produce optimal results.
If there is no evolutionary pressure either for or against biases, what you get is essentially random chance. That's the null hypothesis: "we just happened to wind up with biases, because evolutionary pressure didn't care either way".
I am asking you to explain what sorts of evolutionary pressure might select for these biases, because I'm not seeing it. Furthermore, I would like to know whether that still applies - if it was only useful to avoid being eaten by lions, great, but then dropping it now that we don't regularly confront lions isn't meaningfully "bad for you".
> Natural selection produces good enough results. It does not necessarily produce optimal results.
Sure but we don't even know what an optimal result is. And many of the solutions evolution has come up with we can't even reproduce. So in a sense evolution, though not maximally optimal, in many cases is far MORE optimal then anything we can come up with and thus for all intents and purposes evolution can be quite optimal relative to any solution we can cook up. There's nothing logically preventing human biases from being part of this optimal group given that we aren't completely sure why these biases exist.
>If there is no evolutionary pressure either for or against biases, what you get is essentially random chance. That's the null hypothesis: "we just happened to wind up with biases, because evolutionary pressure didn't care either way".
Don't try to pretend to do science here. Unless an actual experiment is run, we're going to use logical assumptions to figure things out rather then scientific testing.
Anyway logically speaking your "null hypothesis" has a flaw. Random mutations don't coalesce into an identical features across all humans. Individual humans will acquire different random mutations. That's what random means. If all humans acquired the same mutation it wouldn't be random anymore.
So something like different heights is something that there's not that much selection pressure for, so there's variability in height. Not all humans are the same height. However, something without variability that is identical across all races, according to the theory of natural selection... means that there is selection pressure.
For bias, there are certain biases that are literally identical across all races. This is very different from varying heights. The IKEA effect is one example of an identical bias. The fact that, this bias is identical across most people shows that SOMETHING is selecting for it.
I'll caveat with some detail here... There is a secondary outcome in evolution when there is no selection pressure. With enough breeding the random mutations can coalesce into a singular feature but this feature is not what you think. You see this with blind fish who live in caves. Over time those fish lose their eyes. This is because they don't use their eyes so eventually random mutations that render them blind accumulate to the point that the fish don't have eyes anymore. But these random mutations accumulate into a lack of a feature... not a random identical feature on all fish. If you see that all cave fish are growing wings out of their eye sockets, it's not because of lack of selection pressure... something had to have made it happen. This is what we see with biases. Many biases are not only identical, but very a very specific feature set.
>if it was only useful to avoid being eaten by lions, great, but then dropping it now that we don't regularly confront lions isn't meaningfully "bad for you".
How is the ikea effect only meaningful for avoiding getting eaten by lions? You're probably talking about fear. This theory of lions applies to fear and is about how certain phobias are no longer applicable to the modern world.
But how does this apply to the ikea effect? If you think all bias has no relevance in the modern world then that in itself is biased thinking. There's no evidence for this. In fact it's quite unlikely. Maybe some biases are no longer relevant, but certainly it's not clear whether the Ikea effect is some vestigial feature that no longer applies. There are tons of biases that, in fact, still help you survive.
>because I'm not seeing it.
Now do you see? Because if you don't... that might be a sort of stubborn bias talking. Maybe you're not trying to understand me here. Maybe you're trying to make me understand your point and vice versa. Maybe it's rare for people to ask a genuine question on HN...and everyo...
It's not denying. It's acknowledging and overcoming.
Biases might be good for fast decision-making (when you can't pause and think, or it's not worth it), but most situations are not questions of survival and you'd pretty much better activate your slow, analytic, thinking mode taking in account your biases if you want to take the best decisions when you can help it. Biases are by definition deviations from reality, you don't want them in this case.
And we live in a different world now than in the past and some things from then might not apply anymore / might be counter-productive.
> It's not denying. It's acknowledging and overcoming.
Same thing. If these tendencies were good for you, your brain would not have evolved bias as something that you need to "acknowledge and overcome."
>Biases are by definition deviations from reality, you don't want them in this case.
Who says? Why should reality be acknowledged if it doesn't help with success or survival? there are many cases where biased thinking aides in survival and success.
Many people who deny reality are happier and more successful then those that don't. So who's to say acknowledging reality for the true horror that it is, is the best decision for people?
For example, does Trump fully acknowledge the true objective reality that surrounds him? Is he a pretty successful person as well? No and Yes would be my personal answer to those questions.
>And we live in a different world now than in the past and some things from then might not apply anymore / might be counter-productive.
That's just a theory. And that theory applies to a different world that only encompasses 0.1% of human history. Your biases are the result of natural selection pressures that have existed for 99% of human history and you're trying to say that the current 0.1% of modern human history is a changed world where all evolutionary pressures no longer apply.
I would venture a guess that you could be partly right. Some features no longer apply. But we don't know for sure which features, and for what reason. We only have theories.
What you cannot deny is that bias exists and it has aided in our survival for millions of years. So denying its success based off of some theory of a "changed world" is not necessarily a sure fire bet.
It's a gamble. When my gut and instincts tug me in biased direction I can question it, but I never ignore it. It would be unwise for me ignore a feature that has assisted the human species in survival for the majority of its existence.
> So denying it's historical success based off of some theory
That's not what I'm doing. I'm more than ready to acknowledge the fact that our history has led us to have biases and that these biases might have helped us historically, and that it might still apply today in some situations.
Because we need(ed) to be able to find fast answers and we need(ed) heuristics for that.
But this is not a reason to unplug our brains when we don't need to be that fast. Whatever is good for immediate survival might probably not be so good for long term decisions.
Here's a riddle. In some shop, you can buy a paddle + a ball for $103. The paddle costs $100 more than the ball. How much is the ball?
You might be biased to answer $3. The bias that makes you think that might help you guess this answer might lead you to the right answer most of the time. But here that's wrong, and this bias is not going to save your ass. You'd better have the right answer or you might take decisions on wrong data. Don't you want to avoid these kind of biases? What good is there in thinking that the ball is $3?
We are also biased to reject people different from us. Historically, that might have helped us be cautious because people different from us might have belonged to other tribes that would fight us. But this kind of biases may make us racist. Is that what we want? Don't we want to fight this?
A big chunk of the population is biased to be scared of spiders. But in places where spiders are harmless, this bias is at best worthless.
Biases are tools for fast thinking. As natural as they are, they are just that: tools, with drawbacks. Use wisely and cautiously.
> It's a gamble
exactly.
> When my gut and instincts tug me in biased direction I can question it, but I never ignore it
Of course, they are a start, an input. As long as you think. But I'd say the awareness of having biases should make you trust your gut / instincts less, not more.
Think of it this way. Biases certainly do have an obvious cost. We think it's $100 when it's obviously not. This is a cost, there's no denying that. But that same bias still exists for an evolutionary reason. It cannot be denied. Thus this bias has a benefit as well. A hidden benefit that is not clear. Maybe this benefit is no longer applicable in modern times... but we can't know for sure. It's likely such a bias is a side effect of something else.
>But this kind of biases may make us racist.
Depends on what you mean by racism. Being "against" anything or "for" a part of a team is part of group think. You buy into the current woke culture and that in itself is bias. But it's a good bias, it helps you.
Let's think of race logically. If genetics can describe the way races look... from darker skin on Africans, smaller eyes for asians, and lighter skin for Caucasians... Then by what black magic does it suddenly cause all mental faculties and behavioral tendencies to be equal across races? There is no logic behind behavioral equality at all, yet it is culturally insensitive not to believe it. In fact if you state you don't believe it, you will get attacked.
This black magic pervades our thinking and biases and we assume it to be true. If someone says black people are more likely to criminals because of inherent higher aggression, according to modern culture, that statement is bad and racist. Yet according to the logic of pure rationality the statement has enough validity to be considered for study. The statistics show higher correlation with crime and certain races, the logic of genetics don't deny it as a possibility either; the final logic is thus inescapable and the overall assumption is worth looking at.
If you're extremely rational, and extremely logical. Researching for the fact that genetics can influence behavior between different races is a valid research subject. But to do this you have to be above the biased group think. And if you're above the biased group think, you're going to get attacked for being a racist.
I bet this post will be flagged for even mentioning genetics and racial behavior, EVEN if it is a logical possibility. And that is a real example of how biases protect you. By being biased, by being completely unaware and buying into the current group think you're protected from attack and group self selection. By existing on a higher rational and unbiased plane you open yourself up for reactionary attacks. I likely will automatically get compared to the KKK for believing that racial differences across physical aspects and behavioral aspects are real.
Even believing that "rationality and unbiased-ness is great" is buying into biased group think. Everybody thinks rationality is better, everybody thinks of themselves as rational when in reality neither statement is completely true.
>Biases are tools for fast thinking.
This is your "bias" talking. We aren't clear what they're all for. Some could be for fast thinking. There's no definitive scientific evidence for what all our biases for, so logically you're being biased for making such an assumption. It's typical. People have biases that make them try to simplify the world around them. There's huge complexity here but you simplified it into a singular talking point: Biases are just things for fast thinking.
Another biased talking point: Racism is bad.
My guess is that some biases are for fast thinking. But not all. There's a potpourri of thousands of reasons for each of the multitudes of biases we have.
Personally, to be truly unbiased, to be truly emotionally uninvested into anything is a curse. It's the fruit of knowledge. You don't want it at all. Once you eat that fruit, there's no going back.
No, this is my current view after reading/watching things about critical thinking. This might be a bias, but not an instinctive/builtin one. You have a point when you say that we don't have evidence on why biases are there. But this is how I choose to try to use or avoid them. My phrasing was imprecise.
> to be truly emotionally uninvested into anything
I'm not advocating this.
> A hidden benefit that is not clear. Maybe this benefit is no longer applicable in modern times... but we can't know for sure
It goes both ways then.
I think I see my biases as weaknesses (for taking well-thought decisions) and you, as strengths. I mainly seek truth, you mainly seek survival. I don't think trying to avoid my biases will put me in danger. I believe biases impair my reasoning (and so will go against me reaching the truth - of course, truth is not always an absolute thing). Given this, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Your point about "Hang on, biases might be there for good reason, careful before trying to avoid them" is interesting though.
>> A hidden benefit that is not clear. Maybe this benefit is no longer applicable in modern times... but we can't know for sure
>It goes both ways then.
It's not logical to assume that it goes both ways. One could say only 1% of our biases are unsuited for modern times and as a result of this not even worth considering as a general fact. This is a real possibility.
To assume it "goes both ways" is a bias.
>I think I see my biases as weaknesses (for taking well-thought decisions) and you, as strengths.
Everyone sees biases weakness. This is in itself another bias. You are also taking a specific perspective of something. To be unbiased is to take no perspective.
>I mainly seek truth, you mainly seek survival.
You seek survival over truth, this is universal across most humans and any deviation from this, has a very low probability of being true. Humans place survival and survival of offspring as priorities higher than anything else. This is an evolved trait.
Think about it, let's say I'm a psychic with a gun. I point the gun at you (or anyone) and tell them to actually believe that the world is flat or I'll shoot them. I'm psychic so I know if they don't truly believe it. I'm pretty sure you (and everyone else) will be trying their damn best to deny all truth. Survival > truth for basically anyone.
I hate to say this, but being unaware of this without me illustrating the concept with an example is also a form of bias. Centering your opinions and viewpoints around something you "seek" is also another form of bias.
>> to be truly emotionally uninvested into anything
>I'm not advocating this.
Any emotional investment is bias. By not advocating this you are advocating bias.
Basically, you are not an unbiased person. The content of your writing shows this. You buy into cliche biases that most people buy into. This is a good thing.
It's also possible that you might get defensive over what I'm saying. It seems, part of your identity is invested in "truth seeking" so for me to say you're not biased can in itself trigger another bias in you.
I, on the other-hand, am more unbiased then most people. The fact that I can see most of these things easily is a form of detachment that most people aren't capable of. My unbiased-ness literally makes me believe in things racist people believe in. It makes me have zero identity, zero pride, and zero patriotism of any form. I don't even take pride in "truth seeking" that most science believers like you believe in.
I'm telling you. Being unbiased is not necessarily a good thing. This isn't knowledge that changes your life for the better, it makes you disconnected from most people. It's a deviation from our biological nature and achieving this state is highly unnatural. Humans are evolved to be biased. To deny our bias is to go against our true nature.
But then again It's pointless for me to say this. You aren't an unbiased person to begin with and most people in your position don't ever get to the point where I'm at.
> It's not logical to assume that it goes both ways. One could say only 1% of our biases are unsuited for modern times and as a result of this not even worth considering as a general fact. This is a real possibility.
Yes, but we don't know, right? That's what I was saying when I was saying it goes both ways "then". On this basis, if I cannot defend my side against biases, you can't argue for biases neither.
Okay, I think I get your point, I'm not sure we are speaking about the same things. I would not put "emotionally invested" for instance in the category of biases I was referring to.
By being emotionally invested in a subject, I'll be motivated to dig deeper. I wont dig into a subject I don't care about. I might also have some biases that make me want the truth to be one side or another. That is a bias I should be careful about / could take advantage of (by being all the more careful about arguments that validate "my" side for instance). There are the cognitive biases that might make me do errors of logic, them I want to avoid too.
> "Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment"
I want to avoid these biases if I want rationality or emit judgment. Those are the biases I'm speaking about.
Of course, in the situation you expose, truth is all of a sudden not a priority anymore and I'll seek survival instead, but that's not a normal situation. Obviously I'll do whatever I can to avoid danger and will probably be in very fast thinking mode in case of immediate danger. But most of the time this is not a situation I'm into.
And if I need to believe in flat world to avoid dying, unfortunately I'll probably die. I'd prefer not to but, if I can lie, I don't know a solid way of forgetting facts at will.
> It seems, part of your identity is invested in "truth seeking" so for me to say you're not biased can in itself trigger another bias in you [...] It's also possible that you might get defensive over what I'm saying
My identity is kept small, but thanks for worrying. I'm happy to be proven wrong any time.
> I don't even take pride in "truth seeking" that most science believers like you believe in
There we are. "science believers". Science is not belief. It's shared knowledge, obtained with shared and agreed upon methods and protocols (the reality is definitely flawed, and of course knowledge always has some level of uncertainty except maybe mathematics, but that's the best we have), and shared known unknowns too. If you are not into this, we'll definitely have to stop discussing because we'll go nowhere together. There is no way one will be able to change the mind of the other so continuing to discuss is pointless since readers of this discussion probably also have their mind set.
By the way, you can't state that anything is proven or unproven if you think science is belief. That's either meaningless or dishonest. Because science is the only way anything could possibly be proven or proven wrong and you'll reject this as belief into which you apparently don't buy. This also makes our entire discussion quite irrelevant, since its premise that you set is that the goodness or badness of biases in the modern world is unproven. I should have asked you if you took science as belief earlier.
And I don't "take pride in 'truth seeking'". You really do make a lot of assumptions about me in this discussion.
I think I've said everything anyway. No hard feelings :-) I guess thanks for the ride.
I'll probably stop replying here. My absence of further answers cannot be interpreted in any way.
I'm a scientist. I know more about the nature of science and it's flaws more then most people. But there are a large cohort of popular science readers who don't truly understand what science is. They sort of worship the results of scientific endeavors as reported by popular science but they don't truly grasp what science is. You're part of that cohort.
>Because science is the only way anything could possibly be proven or proven wrong and you'll reject this as belief into which you apparently don't buy.
Most people don't understand the true nature of science. Even people who worship the concept of empirical testing and the scientific method. There is a huge flaw in science in the fact that NOTHING can be proven in science it is fundamentally impossible. Things can only be falsified in science, nothing can be proven. It's in fact a core tenet of science. To quote Einstein: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” The logic behind why this is the case is not understandable to most people.
>And I don't "take pride in 'truth seeking'". You really do make a lot of assumptions about me in this discussion.
I think you do. Most people take pride in themselves being more "unbiased" then other people. It's normal. By probability you're the same as everyone else. It's cliche.
>My identity is kept small, but thanks for worrying. I'm happy to be proven wrong any time.
I'm not worrying. I'm anticipating your response, and making you aware of of cliche behavior so you don't fall into the trap. But you decided to "stop replying" indicating you are biased and emotionally invested. I mean if you're happy to be proven wrong, why don't you just continue to engage with me or admit you're wrong?
Talk to the customers and learn about their needs and budget for the product. The designed product must meet the needs of the users and not be based on linked in research. Simply set up a stall in an Ikea store and begin surveying the needs of the customers.
> The IKEA effect is a finding that people tend to ascribe a higher valuation towards self-assembled products compared to objectively similar products which they did not assemble.
This does explain a lot about what happens mentally when people self build an AR-15 badly without doing the book learning and research first.
As compared to what they might get as a beginner by dropping two grand for something put together by professionals.
Hey now, my AR that won't cycle because I lost the roll pin for the gas block when building it and refuse to spend $10+shipping for just one measly little half gram piece of metal works fine; as a bolt action rifle.
> This does explain a lot about what happens mentally when people self build $THING badly without doing the book learning and research first.
Did I told the story about a "slow server" where a simple 87Mb MySQL database slowed down to a crawl, like up to 40-60 seconds to respond... but not because we provided bad servers. It was slow because the main query had like 20 "SELECT *" subqueries. But people who don't even understand what SQL is (despite having two programmers and one sysadmin on the team) continued to insist what the problem is with our server, because their "testing server" (a desktop with i7) worked fine. Until I forced them to load their "production data" (87Mb) to their testing server. And suddenly - it started to respond in 40-60 seconds too. Because the test set was like 3Mb (test1, test3, testadflakjfdg and so on).
THEY built that PoS, so it couldn't be bad. It must be something else.
And now look at r/shittycarmods or whatever it called, same motto.
I just think of flat-pack furniture as an easy way to get bulky objects home from the store. I don't get any feeling that I "built" something from assembling the parts.
IKEA self assembly is not a good analogy for “Not invented here”. IKEA is more like the opposite of NIH.
“NIH” from the manager’s perspective would be more like contracting a professional bookshelf maker to build a bookshelf for you. They go to the lumber yard, select wood, cutting, planing and nailing it together to build a perfect bookshelf.
In the IKEA case you get something that works but might not fit your requirements exactly. In the NIH case you get something that is exactly what you need (hopefully), but will be much more expensive to construct and will take orders of magnitude more time.
There’s no right or wrong answers. Sometimes an IKEA bookshelf is suitable. Sometimes it isn’t.
The IKEA effect is not "self assembly", the IKEA effect is "I think of this piece of furniture more highly because I assembled it myself". The IKEA effect compares how people feel about the same piece of furniture when they've assembled it themselves vs when someone else did it.
I understand that. But it’s a bad analogy. Because when when you build something yourself it’s not the same piece of furniture.
You may love it because you made it, fine. But you also may love it because it’s exactly what you need. You may hate it because you tried to build it on a shoestring budget and you got what you paid for.
I am struggling to think of a more fitting analogy to describe this overvaluation of self-assembled items.
What’s similar to IKEA, as in the self-assembly bit, but also doesn’t have the “it’s exactly what I need” effect that confounds the “I love it because I assembled it myself” measurement?
Or maybe I’ll just call it the Effort Effect. Ugly, but I’m not much of a marketer so I’ll take it.
I'd be interested to know how the feelings change if theyve owned the piece of furniture for like a year, rather than having just felt the efforts of putting it together, etc. ie. does the value of the build effect drop off a cliff after the efforts of putting it together are no longer relevant to the builder.
Conjecture: The non-builders will have grown attached to it and the builders will be like, this is old and has various shortcomings, I can build something better.
I feel way more pride in a Betty Crocker cake than I do about all the Ikea furniture I've built. My Ikea furniture is just cheap but functional furniture. I feel no attachment whatsoever. Anymore than I do taking a toilet paper roll out of the bag and "assembling it into the TP holder"
I feel a sense of accomplishment for few hours after having completed assembly but it's not really much more if any more than the sense of accomplishment I feel when I've finished vacuuming and dusting my apartment.
It's really not that it's necessarily an achievement, it's a subconscious bias to value the same product higher than if you don't invest time in building it.
It's a kind of "you're rewarded for your effort" idea.
I love building Ikea furniture. It gives me a feeling of completing something that I rarely get building software, where everything is a work in progress. I'm not very good at DIY or craft stuff in general.
> The IKEA effect is a finding that people tend to ascribe a higher valuation towards self-assembled products compared to objectively similar products which they did not assemble.
Manager language.
"people tend to ascribe a higher valuation towards self-assembled products" which are easier to dismantle and reassemble back. I assembled IKEA furniture and other furniture. When your assembly instructions are only an exploded view of the product, you don't want to do it again.
The value of the product is given also by its utility, not only by its looks.
Far simpler explanation. I don't win anything if the company gets a project that succeeds. I only win as an individual if I get credit for the project.
It is why when I am asked whether a project is worth doing, the answer is always yes. Not because the company gains anything, but because I need stuff for the resume that looks good.
So it is in my interests to kill ideas which are not my own, as I cannot personally gain from those.
+1. Sounds very Google to me. One gets credit for inventing a new service or whatever and then the project dies because nobody gets credit for maintaining it. Woe betide the end luser who fell for it.
Why is the focus on managers? This just feels like needless bashing on managers. IC can just as easily fall in love with their own bad ideas, and I have seen many ICs defend bad ideas in meetings because they don't want to admit that their original idea was a bad one. This happens to everybody.
After reading through the original study[0], I am rather unconvinced of the significance of this effect.
The experimental setup was basically:
1. Divide participants into builders or non-builders
2. Get the builders to assemble an IKEA box, and have the non-builders inspect an assembled box
3. Get the builders to bid on the box they assembled, and the non-builders to bid on the box they inspected
The results sound very impressive, with the builder group bidding 63% more than the non-builder group.
Looking closer, however, the absolute magnitude of the change is tiny, with the builders bidding $0.78 for their masterpiece, while the non-builders bid $0.48.
It's clear that reporting a 63% bid increase makes for a more marketable study than one that reports a 30 cent difference, but it's unclear if this effect scales with larger purchases.
I'm not familiar with the broader literature, but from my uninformed vantage, it seems possible that the effect declines into insignificance with larger purchases.
The paper also reports a second experiment with origami, and the difference is $0.05 vs $0.23, which at least is consistent with the hypothesis that the effect size will decline as prices increase.
Ah, but that is where you are wrong. Facts don't apply to successful memes.
You can remember the 'butterfly effect'? Yeah. Some people dined out doing Ted (x) talks on that one.
To make a meme 'effect' legitimate, you need the scientific paper, ideally published in Nature. It is then a thing.
Let me inspire you:
"The Happy Meal Effect" - surely this one writes its own, with that enlightening twist of knowledge you lacked before, backed up by a scientific study, so it must be true?
"The Dyson Effect" - just an example of doing this with a brand name. This is all about what happens when a boring product gets made high tech, expensive and desirable.
"The Silly Beggar Effect" - those are two words just chosen at random. This could come with its own origin story, maybe in Cincinnati there was an incident in 1893 that (despite time and geography) led Mark Twain to coin the phrase. The pertinent quote is imagined but nobody is going to check. Just by having a silly beggar in town everyone's life improves commensurately. They don't even have any 'broken windows' thanks to the 'Silly Beggar Effect'.
If you cared for American politics then you could pay an agency to promote the phrase "The Corn Pop Effect" describing it as a decline in living standards. Then do your political poll and dress it up as a scientific paper proving there is such a thing as the "Corn Pop Effect". In regular parlance any loss can be shrugged off as just "Corn Pop Effect". With enough money you could get that clumsy phrase on the lips of the world by election time, giving the 'effect' true significance.
The premise of this study is not new, in the days when cake mixes were an exciting product, the marketing men discovered that it was better to not include dried egg. This necessitated adding an egg to the mixture and this made the endeavour 'baking' rather than 'cheating'. The involvement was a good thing. The 'home made baked' product was the result with the desired buy in, not the 'cheated' product.
You know it already. It is a social phenomenon. When someone rocks up at a barbecue or place with an open fire, brandishing marshmallows. After everyone has consumed their marshmallows it is explained that they are real marsh mallows, containing marsh mallow root, as used by the ancients to get their blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm in perfect harmony. So these are not your normal marshmallow 'toy sweets', these are the real deal, to be savoured like truffles laced with gold.
By now everyone has had a few beers. The presence of the open fire makes them feel good. Miraculously they feel that their black bile is definitely in order and that the phlegm situation is great.
Of course the marshmallows were just out of date ones bought from the corner shop and had no active ingredients.
Often people that are not very good at barbecues conflate the Marshmallow effect with their endeavours so any extensive visits made to the rest rooms the following day are all seen as a good thing and not toxic food poisoning. It is easier to admit to 'Marshmallow Effect' than to something brown and runny.
Which brings me on to the 'Pigeon Feather Effect'...
People are weird, aren't they (we)? We all feel all mighty and rational and smart while doing this dumb shit all the time, due to some evolutionary group herding mentality advantage and god knows what else down there in our subconsiousness.
Its all fun and games till elections come and then you feel like a sore thumb in the sea of idiocy... or not.
I gotta say I also wonder about the effect of it. I hate assembling their furniture and the only thing I really care about is the quality and longevity. Which often means that we don't get IKEA products, because their good quality products are often more expensive than their competition.
About the only reason we ever get IKEA furniture is because of how it's delivered. We have two 140cm wide beds so that we have plenty of space for co-sleeping with the offspring (this is semi-normal in Scandinavia), and the offspring also has IKEA beds. Why? Well because IKEA was the only company that delivered beds disassembled in a way that made it possible for us to get them upstairs. We talked with some of the neighbours, and, only one couple managed to get a 140cm wide bed upstairs, and they did it, by disassembling half the stair case and break down half a wall. Now I have no idea why IKEA is the only company that delivers a mattress that is rolled up and without air and bed frames that aren't already assembled around here, but that's just how it is. So it was either IKEA or a ton of trouble.
2011 surely was the last year of an Ikea era, where they made stuff that you could reassemble twice without worrying about things falling apart like glued glorified wood dust.
This is a useful property to know of furniture you acquire, which can only be learned through assembly.
Nowadays it's mostly just depressing build once, use and discard-at-move affairs, with some notable exceptions (STARKVIND even has a dedicated place to store the Allen key).
But it is still possible to re-assemble even 3 or 4 times. That's based on my anecdata as well as my friends' anecdata. You just need to be careful and avoid using powertools. Powertools often do a lot of damage when they tighten screws too hard.
This is something I have seen countless times in the industry. People create some shitty things, and then hang on to it like their lives depended on it. Then other people avoid criticizing the stuff, because "it's their baby". wtf?
One of my biggest pride is to be able to say that my code is obsolete or not good enough, and be able to discard it without looking back.
This is not the same thing as "not invented here". NIH happens before you build the product (should we build or buy it?). The IKEA effect happens afterwards (my crap is golden).
All the examples seem to boil down to "manager wants thing he did to be useful". Sure, that might be the IKEA effect, but it seems more likely to me that they simply don't want to be perceived as having made a mistake.
Falling in love with one's own ideas is hardly unique to managers. I guess it can happen to anyone, and I know for a fact that it can happen to programmers.
This post reminds me of this excerpt from the book How to Measure Anything by Douglas Hubbard:
> What many organizations do to assess risk is not very enlightening. The methods I propose for assessing risk would be familiar to an actuary, statistician, or financial analyst. But some of the most popular methods for measuring risk look nothing like what an actuary might be familiar with. Many organizations simply say a risk is “high,” “medium,” or “low.” Or perhaps they rate it on a scale of 1 to 5. When I find situations like this, I sometimes ask how much “medium” risk really is. Is a 5% chance of losing more than $5 million a low, medium, or high risk? Nobody knows. Is a medium-risk investment with a 15% return on investment better or worse than a high-risk investment with a 50% return? Again, nobody knows because the statements themselves are ambiguous.
[…]
It is true that many of the users of these methods will report that they feel much more confident in their decisions as a result. But, as we will see in Chapter 12, this feeling should not be confused with evidence of effectiveness. We will learn that studies have shown that it is quite possible to experience an increase in confidence about decisions and forecasts without actually improving things—or even by making them worse.
For now, just know that there is apparently a strong placebo effect in many decision analysis and risk analysis methods. Managers need to start to be able to tell the difference between feeling better about decisions and actually having better track records over time. There must be measured evidence that decisions and forecasts actually improved. Unfortunately, risk analysis or risk management—or decision analysis in general—rarely has a performance metric of its own. 3The good news is that some methods have been measured, and they show a real improvement.
83 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadWhile I agree with the potential hazards of this kind of thinking, I'd be interested to see some positives in addition to just the "pitfalls".
Better idea of valuation of labor in addition to materials? Reduction of waste? Some intangible "what we learned along the way" factor?
There are lots of reasons why people push their own solutions. To stake a claim of expertise in an area, the need to impress peers and reports, genuine ignorance of other solutions...
A lot of people also find it really difficult to admit they were wrong, even to themselves. This means as an idea starts emerging as suboptimal, the people that came up with and championed it are going to be the last to see that, and will be pushing for it despite what look like clear flaws. This is probably better explained by the gambler's fallacy than Ikea effect, though.
The person who was unbiased, the person who didn't feel the irrational ikea effect, did not survive to reproduce you. So trying to deny your natural tendencies and natural biases can also influence your survival.
Every physical and mental aspect of your being is "caused" by your genetics which is again "caused" by natural selection... that is, in fact the theory of natural selection. To deny causation is to deny the theory of natural selection.
(this is a tangent, but some would argue that environment influences the mental aspect of your being... this is true but again, your genes build your brain and ultimately controls how your brain reacts to the environment... you are still ultimately a product of your genes)
I believe in natural selection, hence I believe that evolution "caused" bias to evolve in humans. That is why I think this. Does that answer your question?
If there is no evolutionary pressure either for or against biases, what you get is essentially random chance. That's the null hypothesis: "we just happened to wind up with biases, because evolutionary pressure didn't care either way".
I am asking you to explain what sorts of evolutionary pressure might select for these biases, because I'm not seeing it. Furthermore, I would like to know whether that still applies - if it was only useful to avoid being eaten by lions, great, but then dropping it now that we don't regularly confront lions isn't meaningfully "bad for you".
Sure but we don't even know what an optimal result is. And many of the solutions evolution has come up with we can't even reproduce. So in a sense evolution, though not maximally optimal, in many cases is far MORE optimal then anything we can come up with and thus for all intents and purposes evolution can be quite optimal relative to any solution we can cook up. There's nothing logically preventing human biases from being part of this optimal group given that we aren't completely sure why these biases exist.
>If there is no evolutionary pressure either for or against biases, what you get is essentially random chance. That's the null hypothesis: "we just happened to wind up with biases, because evolutionary pressure didn't care either way".
Don't try to pretend to do science here. Unless an actual experiment is run, we're going to use logical assumptions to figure things out rather then scientific testing.
Anyway logically speaking your "null hypothesis" has a flaw. Random mutations don't coalesce into an identical features across all humans. Individual humans will acquire different random mutations. That's what random means. If all humans acquired the same mutation it wouldn't be random anymore.
So something like different heights is something that there's not that much selection pressure for, so there's variability in height. Not all humans are the same height. However, something without variability that is identical across all races, according to the theory of natural selection... means that there is selection pressure.
For bias, there are certain biases that are literally identical across all races. This is very different from varying heights. The IKEA effect is one example of an identical bias. The fact that, this bias is identical across most people shows that SOMETHING is selecting for it.
I'll caveat with some detail here... There is a secondary outcome in evolution when there is no selection pressure. With enough breeding the random mutations can coalesce into a singular feature but this feature is not what you think. You see this with blind fish who live in caves. Over time those fish lose their eyes. This is because they don't use their eyes so eventually random mutations that render them blind accumulate to the point that the fish don't have eyes anymore. But these random mutations accumulate into a lack of a feature... not a random identical feature on all fish. If you see that all cave fish are growing wings out of their eye sockets, it's not because of lack of selection pressure... something had to have made it happen. This is what we see with biases. Many biases are not only identical, but very a very specific feature set.
>if it was only useful to avoid being eaten by lions, great, but then dropping it now that we don't regularly confront lions isn't meaningfully "bad for you".
How is the ikea effect only meaningful for avoiding getting eaten by lions? You're probably talking about fear. This theory of lions applies to fear and is about how certain phobias are no longer applicable to the modern world.
But how does this apply to the ikea effect? If you think all bias has no relevance in the modern world then that in itself is biased thinking. There's no evidence for this. In fact it's quite unlikely. Maybe some biases are no longer relevant, but certainly it's not clear whether the Ikea effect is some vestigial feature that no longer applies. There are tons of biases that, in fact, still help you survive.
>because I'm not seeing it.
Now do you see? Because if you don't... that might be a sort of stubborn bias talking. Maybe you're not trying to understand me here. Maybe you're trying to make me understand your point and vice versa. Maybe it's rare for people to ask a genuine question on HN...and everyo...
Biases might be good for fast decision-making (when you can't pause and think, or it's not worth it), but most situations are not questions of survival and you'd pretty much better activate your slow, analytic, thinking mode taking in account your biases if you want to take the best decisions when you can help it. Biases are by definition deviations from reality, you don't want them in this case.
And we live in a different world now than in the past and some things from then might not apply anymore / might be counter-productive.
Same thing. If these tendencies were good for you, your brain would not have evolved bias as something that you need to "acknowledge and overcome."
>Biases are by definition deviations from reality, you don't want them in this case.
Who says? Why should reality be acknowledged if it doesn't help with success or survival? there are many cases where biased thinking aides in survival and success.
Many people who deny reality are happier and more successful then those that don't. So who's to say acknowledging reality for the true horror that it is, is the best decision for people?
For example, does Trump fully acknowledge the true objective reality that surrounds him? Is he a pretty successful person as well? No and Yes would be my personal answer to those questions.
>And we live in a different world now than in the past and some things from then might not apply anymore / might be counter-productive.
That's just a theory. And that theory applies to a different world that only encompasses 0.1% of human history. Your biases are the result of natural selection pressures that have existed for 99% of human history and you're trying to say that the current 0.1% of modern human history is a changed world where all evolutionary pressures no longer apply.
I would venture a guess that you could be partly right. Some features no longer apply. But we don't know for sure which features, and for what reason. We only have theories.
What you cannot deny is that bias exists and it has aided in our survival for millions of years. So denying its success based off of some theory of a "changed world" is not necessarily a sure fire bet.
It's a gamble. When my gut and instincts tug me in biased direction I can question it, but I never ignore it. It would be unwise for me ignore a feature that has assisted the human species in survival for the majority of its existence.
That's not what I'm doing. I'm more than ready to acknowledge the fact that our history has led us to have biases and that these biases might have helped us historically, and that it might still apply today in some situations.
Because we need(ed) to be able to find fast answers and we need(ed) heuristics for that.
But this is not a reason to unplug our brains when we don't need to be that fast. Whatever is good for immediate survival might probably not be so good for long term decisions.
Here's a riddle. In some shop, you can buy a paddle + a ball for $103. The paddle costs $100 more than the ball. How much is the ball?
You might be biased to answer $3. The bias that makes you think that might help you guess this answer might lead you to the right answer most of the time. But here that's wrong, and this bias is not going to save your ass. You'd better have the right answer or you might take decisions on wrong data. Don't you want to avoid these kind of biases? What good is there in thinking that the ball is $3?
We are also biased to reject people different from us. Historically, that might have helped us be cautious because people different from us might have belonged to other tribes that would fight us. But this kind of biases may make us racist. Is that what we want? Don't we want to fight this?
A big chunk of the population is biased to be scared of spiders. But in places where spiders are harmless, this bias is at best worthless.
Biases are tools for fast thinking. As natural as they are, they are just that: tools, with drawbacks. Use wisely and cautiously.
> It's a gamble
exactly.
> When my gut and instincts tug me in biased direction I can question it, but I never ignore it
Of course, they are a start, an input. As long as you think. But I'd say the awareness of having biases should make you trust your gut / instincts less, not more.
>But this kind of biases may make us racist.
Depends on what you mean by racism. Being "against" anything or "for" a part of a team is part of group think. You buy into the current woke culture and that in itself is bias. But it's a good bias, it helps you.
Let's think of race logically. If genetics can describe the way races look... from darker skin on Africans, smaller eyes for asians, and lighter skin for Caucasians... Then by what black magic does it suddenly cause all mental faculties and behavioral tendencies to be equal across races? There is no logic behind behavioral equality at all, yet it is culturally insensitive not to believe it. In fact if you state you don't believe it, you will get attacked.
This black magic pervades our thinking and biases and we assume it to be true. If someone says black people are more likely to criminals because of inherent higher aggression, according to modern culture, that statement is bad and racist. Yet according to the logic of pure rationality the statement has enough validity to be considered for study. The statistics show higher correlation with crime and certain races, the logic of genetics don't deny it as a possibility either; the final logic is thus inescapable and the overall assumption is worth looking at.
If you're extremely rational, and extremely logical. Researching for the fact that genetics can influence behavior between different races is a valid research subject. But to do this you have to be above the biased group think. And if you're above the biased group think, you're going to get attacked for being a racist.
I bet this post will be flagged for even mentioning genetics and racial behavior, EVEN if it is a logical possibility. And that is a real example of how biases protect you. By being biased, by being completely unaware and buying into the current group think you're protected from attack and group self selection. By existing on a higher rational and unbiased plane you open yourself up for reactionary attacks. I likely will automatically get compared to the KKK for believing that racial differences across physical aspects and behavioral aspects are real.
Even believing that "rationality and unbiased-ness is great" is buying into biased group think. Everybody thinks rationality is better, everybody thinks of themselves as rational when in reality neither statement is completely true.
>Biases are tools for fast thinking.
This is your "bias" talking. We aren't clear what they're all for. Some could be for fast thinking. There's no definitive scientific evidence for what all our biases for, so logically you're being biased for making such an assumption. It's typical. People have biases that make them try to simplify the world around them. There's huge complexity here but you simplified it into a singular talking point: Biases are just things for fast thinking.
Another biased talking point: Racism is bad.
My guess is that some biases are for fast thinking. But not all. There's a potpourri of thousands of reasons for each of the multitudes of biases we have.
Personally, to be truly unbiased, to be truly emotionally uninvested into anything is a curse. It's the fruit of knowledge. You don't want it at all. Once you eat that fruit, there's no going back.
> This is your "bias" talking
No, this is my current view after reading/watching things about critical thinking. This might be a bias, but not an instinctive/builtin one. You have a point when you say that we don't have evidence on why biases are there. But this is how I choose to try to use or avoid them. My phrasing was imprecise.
> to be truly emotionally uninvested into anything
I'm not advocating this.
> A hidden benefit that is not clear. Maybe this benefit is no longer applicable in modern times... but we can't know for sure
It goes both ways then.
I think I see my biases as weaknesses (for taking well-thought decisions) and you, as strengths. I mainly seek truth, you mainly seek survival. I don't think trying to avoid my biases will put me in danger. I believe biases impair my reasoning (and so will go against me reaching the truth - of course, truth is not always an absolute thing). Given this, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Your point about "Hang on, biases might be there for good reason, careful before trying to avoid them" is interesting though.
>It goes both ways then.
It's not logical to assume that it goes both ways. One could say only 1% of our biases are unsuited for modern times and as a result of this not even worth considering as a general fact. This is a real possibility.
To assume it "goes both ways" is a bias.
>I think I see my biases as weaknesses (for taking well-thought decisions) and you, as strengths.
Everyone sees biases weakness. This is in itself another bias. You are also taking a specific perspective of something. To be unbiased is to take no perspective.
>I mainly seek truth, you mainly seek survival.
You seek survival over truth, this is universal across most humans and any deviation from this, has a very low probability of being true. Humans place survival and survival of offspring as priorities higher than anything else. This is an evolved trait.
Think about it, let's say I'm a psychic with a gun. I point the gun at you (or anyone) and tell them to actually believe that the world is flat or I'll shoot them. I'm psychic so I know if they don't truly believe it. I'm pretty sure you (and everyone else) will be trying their damn best to deny all truth. Survival > truth for basically anyone.
I hate to say this, but being unaware of this without me illustrating the concept with an example is also a form of bias. Centering your opinions and viewpoints around something you "seek" is also another form of bias.
>> to be truly emotionally uninvested into anything >I'm not advocating this.
Any emotional investment is bias. By not advocating this you are advocating bias.
Basically, you are not an unbiased person. The content of your writing shows this. You buy into cliche biases that most people buy into. This is a good thing.
It's also possible that you might get defensive over what I'm saying. It seems, part of your identity is invested in "truth seeking" so for me to say you're not biased can in itself trigger another bias in you.
I, on the other-hand, am more unbiased then most people. The fact that I can see most of these things easily is a form of detachment that most people aren't capable of. My unbiased-ness literally makes me believe in things racist people believe in. It makes me have zero identity, zero pride, and zero patriotism of any form. I don't even take pride in "truth seeking" that most science believers like you believe in.
I'm telling you. Being unbiased is not necessarily a good thing. This isn't knowledge that changes your life for the better, it makes you disconnected from most people. It's a deviation from our biological nature and achieving this state is highly unnatural. Humans are evolved to be biased. To deny our bias is to go against our true nature.
But then again It's pointless for me to say this. You aren't an unbiased person to begin with and most people in your position don't ever get to the point where I'm at.
Yes, but we don't know, right? That's what I was saying when I was saying it goes both ways "then". On this basis, if I cannot defend my side against biases, you can't argue for biases neither.
Okay, I think I get your point, I'm not sure we are speaking about the same things. I would not put "emotionally invested" for instance in the category of biases I was referring to.
By being emotionally invested in a subject, I'll be motivated to dig deeper. I wont dig into a subject I don't care about. I might also have some biases that make me want the truth to be one side or another. That is a bias I should be careful about / could take advantage of (by being all the more careful about arguments that validate "my" side for instance). There are the cognitive biases that might make me do errors of logic, them I want to avoid too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases says:
> "Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm and/or rationality in judgment"
I want to avoid these biases if I want rationality or emit judgment. Those are the biases I'm speaking about.
Of course, in the situation you expose, truth is all of a sudden not a priority anymore and I'll seek survival instead, but that's not a normal situation. Obviously I'll do whatever I can to avoid danger and will probably be in very fast thinking mode in case of immediate danger. But most of the time this is not a situation I'm into.
And if I need to believe in flat world to avoid dying, unfortunately I'll probably die. I'd prefer not to but, if I can lie, I don't know a solid way of forgetting facts at will.
> It seems, part of your identity is invested in "truth seeking" so for me to say you're not biased can in itself trigger another bias in you [...] It's also possible that you might get defensive over what I'm saying
My identity is kept small, but thanks for worrying. I'm happy to be proven wrong any time.
> I don't even take pride in "truth seeking" that most science believers like you believe in
There we are. "science believers". Science is not belief. It's shared knowledge, obtained with shared and agreed upon methods and protocols (the reality is definitely flawed, and of course knowledge always has some level of uncertainty except maybe mathematics, but that's the best we have), and shared known unknowns too. If you are not into this, we'll definitely have to stop discussing because we'll go nowhere together. There is no way one will be able to change the mind of the other so continuing to discuss is pointless since readers of this discussion probably also have their mind set.
By the way, you can't state that anything is proven or unproven if you think science is belief. That's either meaningless or dishonest. Because science is the only way anything could possibly be proven or proven wrong and you'll reject this as belief into which you apparently don't buy. This also makes our entire discussion quite irrelevant, since its premise that you set is that the goodness or badness of biases in the modern world is unproven. I should have asked you if you took science as belief earlier.
And I don't "take pride in 'truth seeking'". You really do make a lot of assumptions about me in this discussion.
I think I've said everything anyway. No hard feelings :-) I guess thanks for the ride.
I'll probably stop replying here. My absence of further answers cannot be interpreted in any way.
I'm a scientist. I know more about the nature of science and it's flaws more then most people. But there are a large cohort of popular science readers who don't truly understand what science is. They sort of worship the results of scientific endeavors as reported by popular science but they don't truly grasp what science is. You're part of that cohort.
>Because science is the only way anything could possibly be proven or proven wrong and you'll reject this as belief into which you apparently don't buy.
Most people don't understand the true nature of science. Even people who worship the concept of empirical testing and the scientific method. There is a huge flaw in science in the fact that NOTHING can be proven in science it is fundamentally impossible. Things can only be falsified in science, nothing can be proven. It's in fact a core tenet of science. To quote Einstein: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” The logic behind why this is the case is not understandable to most people.
>And I don't "take pride in 'truth seeking'". You really do make a lot of assumptions about me in this discussion.
I think you do. Most people take pride in themselves being more "unbiased" then other people. It's normal. By probability you're the same as everyone else. It's cliche.
>My identity is kept small, but thanks for worrying. I'm happy to be proven wrong any time.
I'm not worrying. I'm anticipating your response, and making you aware of of cliche behavior so you don't fall into the trap. But you decided to "stop replying" indicating you are biased and emotionally invested. I mean if you're happy to be proven wrong, why don't you just continue to engage with me or admit you're wrong?
This does explain a lot about what happens mentally when people self build an AR-15 badly without doing the book learning and research first.
As compared to what they might get as a beginner by dropping two grand for something put together by professionals.
Did I told the story about a "slow server" where a simple 87Mb MySQL database slowed down to a crawl, like up to 40-60 seconds to respond... but not because we provided bad servers. It was slow because the main query had like 20 "SELECT *" subqueries. But people who don't even understand what SQL is (despite having two programmers and one sysadmin on the team) continued to insist what the problem is with our server, because their "testing server" (a desktop with i7) worked fine. Until I forced them to load their "production data" (87Mb) to their testing server. And suddenly - it started to respond in 40-60 seconds too. Because the test set was like 3Mb (test1, test3, testadflakjfdg and so on).
THEY built that PoS, so it couldn't be bad. It must be something else.
And now look at r/shittycarmods or whatever it called, same motto.
“NIH” from the manager’s perspective would be more like contracting a professional bookshelf maker to build a bookshelf for you. They go to the lumber yard, select wood, cutting, planing and nailing it together to build a perfect bookshelf.
In the IKEA case you get something that works but might not fit your requirements exactly. In the NIH case you get something that is exactly what you need (hopefully), but will be much more expensive to construct and will take orders of magnitude more time.
There’s no right or wrong answers. Sometimes an IKEA bookshelf is suitable. Sometimes it isn’t.
The IKEA effect is not "self assembly", the IKEA effect is "I think of this piece of furniture more highly because I assembled it myself". The IKEA effect compares how people feel about the same piece of furniture when they've assembled it themselves vs when someone else did it.
You may love it because you made it, fine. But you also may love it because it’s exactly what you need. You may hate it because you tried to build it on a shoestring budget and you got what you paid for.
What’s similar to IKEA, as in the self-assembly bit, but also doesn’t have the “it’s exactly what I need” effect that confounds the “I love it because I assembled it myself” measurement?
Or maybe I’ll just call it the Effort Effect. Ugly, but I’m not much of a marketer so I’ll take it.
I feel a sense of accomplishment for few hours after having completed assembly but it's not really much more if any more than the sense of accomplishment I feel when I've finished vacuuming and dusting my apartment.
It's a kind of "you're rewarded for your effort" idea.
I like the cake mix example where letting the consumer add eggs made house wives happier with the cake from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-shaping-us/20191...
And maybe this study should be taken with a grain of salt too.
At any rate, "assembling IKEA furniture" is such a popular task on TaskRabbit that it's featured on the TaskRabbit web site:
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/customer-service/services/assembl...
Manager language. "people tend to ascribe a higher valuation towards self-assembled products" which are easier to dismantle and reassemble back. I assembled IKEA furniture and other furniture. When your assembly instructions are only an exploded view of the product, you don't want to do it again.
The value of the product is given also by its utility, not only by its looks.
It is why when I am asked whether a project is worth doing, the answer is always yes. Not because the company gains anything, but because I need stuff for the resume that looks good.
So it is in my interests to kill ideas which are not my own, as I cannot personally gain from those.
The experimental setup was basically:
1. Divide participants into builders or non-builders
2. Get the builders to assemble an IKEA box, and have the non-builders inspect an assembled box
3. Get the builders to bid on the box they assembled, and the non-builders to bid on the box they inspected
The results sound very impressive, with the builder group bidding 63% more than the non-builder group.
Looking closer, however, the absolute magnitude of the change is tiny, with the builders bidding $0.78 for their masterpiece, while the non-builders bid $0.48.
It's clear that reporting a 63% bid increase makes for a more marketable study than one that reports a 30 cent difference, but it's unclear if this effect scales with larger purchases.
I'm not familiar with the broader literature, but from my uninformed vantage, it seems possible that the effect declines into insignificance with larger purchases.
The paper also reports a second experiment with origami, and the difference is $0.05 vs $0.23, which at least is consistent with the hypothesis that the effect size will decline as prices increase.
[0]: https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/11-091.pdf
You can remember the 'butterfly effect'? Yeah. Some people dined out doing Ted (x) talks on that one.
To make a meme 'effect' legitimate, you need the scientific paper, ideally published in Nature. It is then a thing.
Let me inspire you:
"The Happy Meal Effect" - surely this one writes its own, with that enlightening twist of knowledge you lacked before, backed up by a scientific study, so it must be true?
"The Dyson Effect" - just an example of doing this with a brand name. This is all about what happens when a boring product gets made high tech, expensive and desirable.
"The Silly Beggar Effect" - those are two words just chosen at random. This could come with its own origin story, maybe in Cincinnati there was an incident in 1893 that (despite time and geography) led Mark Twain to coin the phrase. The pertinent quote is imagined but nobody is going to check. Just by having a silly beggar in town everyone's life improves commensurately. They don't even have any 'broken windows' thanks to the 'Silly Beggar Effect'.
If you cared for American politics then you could pay an agency to promote the phrase "The Corn Pop Effect" describing it as a decline in living standards. Then do your political poll and dress it up as a scientific paper proving there is such a thing as the "Corn Pop Effect". In regular parlance any loss can be shrugged off as just "Corn Pop Effect". With enough money you could get that clumsy phrase on the lips of the world by election time, giving the 'effect' true significance.
The premise of this study is not new, in the days when cake mixes were an exciting product, the marketing men discovered that it was better to not include dried egg. This necessitated adding an egg to the mixture and this made the endeavour 'baking' rather than 'cheating'. The involvement was a good thing. The 'home made baked' product was the result with the desired buy in, not the 'cheated' product.
You know it already. It is a social phenomenon. When someone rocks up at a barbecue or place with an open fire, brandishing marshmallows. After everyone has consumed their marshmallows it is explained that they are real marsh mallows, containing marsh mallow root, as used by the ancients to get their blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm in perfect harmony. So these are not your normal marshmallow 'toy sweets', these are the real deal, to be savoured like truffles laced with gold.
By now everyone has had a few beers. The presence of the open fire makes them feel good. Miraculously they feel that their black bile is definitely in order and that the phlegm situation is great.
Of course the marshmallows were just out of date ones bought from the corner shop and had no active ingredients.
Often people that are not very good at barbecues conflate the Marshmallow effect with their endeavours so any extensive visits made to the rest rooms the following day are all seen as a good thing and not toxic food poisoning. It is easier to admit to 'Marshmallow Effect' than to something brown and runny.
Which brings me on to the 'Pigeon Feather Effect'...
Its all fun and games till elections come and then you feel like a sore thumb in the sea of idiocy... or not.
About the only reason we ever get IKEA furniture is because of how it's delivered. We have two 140cm wide beds so that we have plenty of space for co-sleeping with the offspring (this is semi-normal in Scandinavia), and the offspring also has IKEA beds. Why? Well because IKEA was the only company that delivered beds disassembled in a way that made it possible for us to get them upstairs. We talked with some of the neighbours, and, only one couple managed to get a 140cm wide bed upstairs, and they did it, by disassembling half the stair case and break down half a wall. Now I have no idea why IKEA is the only company that delivers a mattress that is rolled up and without air and bed frames that aren't already assembled around here, but that's just how it is. So it was either IKEA or a ton of trouble.
Kidding aside, IKEA furniture is the most off the shelf you can get. You set it up and thats it.
This is a useful property to know of furniture you acquire, which can only be learned through assembly.
Nowadays it's mostly just depressing build once, use and discard-at-move affairs, with some notable exceptions (STARKVIND even has a dedicated place to store the Allen key).
This is something I have seen countless times in the industry. People create some shitty things, and then hang on to it like their lives depended on it. Then other people avoid criticizing the stuff, because "it's their baby". wtf?
One of my biggest pride is to be able to say that my code is obsolete or not good enough, and be able to discard it without looking back.
This is not the same thing as "not invented here". NIH happens before you build the product (should we build or buy it?). The IKEA effect happens afterwards (my crap is golden).
You don't want to deal with a few hero seniors adamant their half-chewed solution is best either.
I presume this is an Americanism.
https://www.wrike.com/agile-guide/faq/what-is-a-spike-story-...
I would imagine women are culturally less inclined to "brag" about their accomplishment than men.
Or maybe people undervalue things that are done by other people?
Similarly with NIH syndrome. There is certain rational part in valuing internal knowledge, and "building to size" for own needs.
> What many organizations do to assess risk is not very enlightening. The methods I propose for assessing risk would be familiar to an actuary, statistician, or financial analyst. But some of the most popular methods for measuring risk look nothing like what an actuary might be familiar with. Many organizations simply say a risk is “high,” “medium,” or “low.” Or perhaps they rate it on a scale of 1 to 5. When I find situations like this, I sometimes ask how much “medium” risk really is. Is a 5% chance of losing more than $5 million a low, medium, or high risk? Nobody knows. Is a medium-risk investment with a 15% return on investment better or worse than a high-risk investment with a 50% return? Again, nobody knows because the statements themselves are ambiguous.
[…]
It is true that many of the users of these methods will report that they feel much more confident in their decisions as a result. But, as we will see in Chapter 12, this feeling should not be confused with evidence of effectiveness. We will learn that studies have shown that it is quite possible to experience an increase in confidence about decisions and forecasts without actually improving things—or even by making them worse.
For now, just know that there is apparently a strong placebo effect in many decision analysis and risk analysis methods. Managers need to start to be able to tell the difference between feeling better about decisions and actually having better track records over time. There must be measured evidence that decisions and forecasts actually improved. Unfortunately, risk analysis or risk management—or decision analysis in general—rarely has a performance metric of its own. 3The good news is that some methods have been measured, and they show a real improvement.