Why we make things and value the things we make
Lego sales are up. People are baking bread. Crafting is having a renaissance.
Since the start of stay-at-home orders, I think I’ve started a new project in every room of our home. Anyone else DIYing up a storm?
Today we’ll talk about why we value things we make ourselves, like our misshapen breads, hand-painted pottery, and the IKEA couch that caused a lot of swearing while we put it together.
Understanding why we value the things we make and what benefits we derive from making things can help inform why many of us are drawn to crafting, gardening, home projects, and the like right now. We’ll also talk about products designed in a way that enhance the positive outcomes we derive from doing things ourselves.
The IKEA effect
The IKEA effect is cheekily named after the ubiquitous ready-to-assemble furniture brand. In brief, the effect is that we value things we’ve made ourselves more highly that those made by others. Even if “making” something is assembling pieces of wood with a hex key following cartoonish wordless instructions.
Image source. A woman of few words from an IKEA instruction booklet.
The original study demonstrating the IKEA effect did so with a few kinds of items, including, yes, an IKEA product.
In one experiment, 52 participants were asked to either assemble an IKEA storage box or to carefully inspect an already-assembled box. Next, participants bid on how much they would be willing to pay for the box (with their own money) using an experimental technique that incentivizes people to act in line with their true preferences. They also rated how much they liked the box.
The builders were willing to pay 63% more for the storage box than those who just inspected the box. Not that the researchers received some crazy high offers (an average of $0.48 from those inspecting boxes and $0.78 from the builders), but still. The builders also liked the box more.
A follow-up experiment further tested the effect with a different type of product – origami animals. One group of participants (the builders) were asked to create origami cranes and frogs following a set of instructions and then to bid on their creations. While the builders were engaged in other experimental tasks, another group of participants bid on the builders’ creations. This allowed the researchers to compare how people valued their handmade items as compared to “the market”: unbiased people who didn’t make these products.
A third group of participants instead bid on frogs and cranes conveniently created by in-lab experts: “two research assistants with a great deal of experience with origami”. Whether origami expertise was a job requirement for working in the lab remained unstated.
So, how highly did people value their creations? Very highly, it turns out. The builders valued their own origami nearly five times higher than the clear-eyed non-builders (average bids were $0.23 from builders, and a measly $0.05 from non-builders). In fact, the builders valued their work nearly as highly as non-builders valued experts’ work (a whopping $0.27).
Image source, annotations added. People who constructed origami were willing to pay more for their creations than others. Origami builders bid nearly as much for their work as non-builders bid on expert origami.
To confirm that builders were valuing their work highly, as opposed to over-bidding in order to ensure that they could keep their work, another group of builders were asked to bid on their creations and to also estimate what an average person would bid on them. Builders’ own bids and predictions for others’ bids didn’t differ, suggesting that builders actually believed their work to be valuable.
Why do we make things and value what we’ve made?
An overarching reason why we make things and value what we’ve made is our need for effectance—the ability to produce outcomes we desire in the world around us. Effectance is closely related to our fundamental needs for competence and autonomy/control. One way to fulfill these needs is by controlling physical objects. Successfully creating something out of nothing (or at least out of a set of more basic components) allows us to exercise control over the world and to show our competence. The end product is the direct effect of our intended actions on the world.
In support of the idea that successful completion of an item is important to its value, the IKEA effect disappears when people don’t get to finish making something they were working on. In one experiment, participants were either asked to build a full IKEA box or were told to stop building it with two steps left unfinished. Those who finished assembling the box valued it higher than those who didn’t get to finish.
Similarly, the IKEA effect disappears if people assemble an object and are then asked to disassemble it. After assembling and disassembling something, our actions leave no lasting effect on the world – we’ve exerted effort, but we haven’t changed or produced anything tangible.
Apart from physically assembling an item, designing it is part of making it, too. The IKEA effect still holds if people design their own object (in this case: a loom band bracelet) but are stopped from finishing making their design. Perhaps by designing an object for ourselves, we already impart our intentions for what it should be and establish an emotional connection to the object.
This can happen even if we have nothing to do with actually producing an object we’ve designed. For example, people are more attached to mass-produced products they’ve customized and value them higher than objects they haven’t customized. We’ve been able to make inexpensive customized mugs, mousepads, and posters for years. More recently, companies have applied new technology to allow people to make relatively inexpensive custom textiles and furniture. Imagine the size of the IKEA effect and the attachment most people would feel to a couch they designed (or at least felt they designed) themselves.
Competence: high and low
The link between making things and feeling competent is strong. And surprisingly, it goes both ways. Let me explain.
Making things can make us feel competent. In one experiment, participants were asked to either build or examine a Lego car, to bid on its value, and to evaluate their competence related to the car. Replicating the IKEA effect, those who built a car bid higher on it than those who just examined it. Those who built a car also felt more competent. People’s perceived competence mediated the relationship between the condition they were in (build vs. non-build) and their willingness to pay, suggesting that building the car made people feel more competent, which in turn made them value the car more.
So now going the other way. Feelings of competence can affect our desire to make things. More specifically, feeling incompetent makes us want to make things.
We know this because researchers have made participants either feel competent or incompetent and then tested their preference for assembled or ready-to-assemble furniture. Ah, science.
In one experiment, participants assigned to a high-competence condition were asked to answer four easy multiple-choice math problems (e.g., How likely is it that a fair coin that is tossed once will come up heads?). Those assigned to a low competence condition were asked to answer four hard multiple-choice math problems (e.g., You have 4 coins. Three of the coins are normal, but one of them is heads on both sides. You pick a coin at random without looking. The coin you pick has heads on one side. What are the odds that if you flip the coin over, the other side will be tails?). Not surprisingly, those in the high competence condition nailed it (92% accuracy), while those in the low competence condition performed at chance (22% accuracy).
After the competence manipulation, participants were shown a photo of an IKEA bookcase and asked to imagine they had just bought it. They were then asked whether they would prefer the bookcase to come preassembled or to assemble it themselves.
Only a third of the participants who were made to feel competent by solving the easy math problems wanted to assemble the bookcase themselves. But almost 60% of those who had their confidence shaken with the difficult math problems reported wanting to assemble the bookcase.
Image source, annotations added. People who were made to feel incompetent were more likely to prefer assembling their own furniture than those who were made to feel competent.
The researchers also replicated this competence effect with another group of participants and a choice similar to the kind people would make in real life (would you rather buy a pre-assembled table from Target or a table that requires assembly from IKEA?) in another experiment.
The explanation for this finding is that when we feel incompetent, making something tangible is a way to reassert our ability to effect change in the world. It’s a way to signal to ourselves that we’re not so incompetent, after all.
“Producing something tangible is a really nice feeling”
Promoting feelings of competence and autonomy in DIY activities
In line with all the theorizing and lab studies, a qualitative study of real-life DIYers reveals that the most important motivations people have for pursuing hobbies that involve making things (e.g., carpentry, cooking, sewing, jewelry making) are competence and autonomy. People look forward to the satisfaction they will feel after successfully making something (as one person summed up: “producing something tangible is a really nice feeling”). At the same time, having autonomy during the making process is important. People want to have the freedom to make creative decisions. Having control over choices also strengthens their emotional connection with the final product. As one person explained: “you made it yourself; you chose the colors and stuff, so it’s customized. It feels like it belongs to you”.
Almost anyone can put together a simple IKEA item, but making most anything else requires some degree of skill. Instructions and kits can help out by lowering the bar for the competence needed to make something. There’s no way I could make a tres leches cake or ricotta gnocchi if left to my own imagination and know-how, but I can make both fine using a recipe. Simplifying cooking and baking even further, a meal kit or boxed cake mix provide people most of the ingredients and a short list of directions to make something real.
While instructions and kits can minimize needed skill, they can also impose a set of constraints that can diminish people’s feelings of autonomy, decreasing their enjoyment of the activity.
This tension is demonstrated well by a cookie decorating experiment. In it, all participants were given tools, cookie dough, and icing. The researchers varied two factors: (1) whether participants were given step-by-step instructions on how to roll out, cut out, and decorate the cookies, and (2) whether participants were given a picture of a particular cookie to try to recreate.
Those who were given step-by-step instructions on how to decorate cookies but were not trying to recreate a specific cookie felt the most competent, the most autonomous, and enjoyed the task the most. Being given freedom to make creative decisions while receiving the needed instructional support to make them real resulted in the most positive experience.
Image source, annotations added. Participants who were given step-by-step instructions and not given a picture of a cookie to recreate felt the most competent and the most autonomous.
In cases where people are given the chance to make creative decisions, it matters whether these decisions and actions are integrated (deciding what to do as you go) or separated (making decisions first, then executing those decisions). Making all the creative decisions first and then executing is kind of a slog.
In one study, participants customized Christmas elves with “adornments” cut out from wrapping paper. Each adornment involved a choice between two types of wrapping paper. In a low-effort condition, participants cut out and pasted three adornments (shoes, ears, hat) on the elf. In the high-effort condition, they cut out and pasted eight. Participants either made a choice for each item and immediately executed the choice (assemble-as-you-go), or they were asked to wait to assemble the elf from all the parts at the end (assemble-at-the-end). When the effort was low, the wait didn’t seem to make much of a difference on people’s valuation of the elf. But when the effort was high (i.e., people had to make many customization decisions), elves were valued more highly if participants were allowed to execute decisions immediately after making them, rather than at the end.
Image source, annotations added. When participants made many customization decisions (high effort condition), they valued items more if they could immediately execute the decisions (assemble-as-you-go) than if they had to wait to execute the decisions (assemble-at-the-end).
Perhaps creative activities that interleave decision and action are valued more highly because they’re more likely to result in a state of flow. We typically achieve this state when our skills match the difficulty of the task and when we continually adjust our actions based on immediate perceptual feedback (e.g., what elf hat would look good with those elf ears?). Making decisions all at once front-loads the challenge, doesn’t allow us to make adjustments based on previous actions, and leaves all the boring stuff (gluing) til the end.
Image source, annotations added. We achieve a flow state when our skills match the challenges we encounter and when we continually make adjustments to our actions based on perceptual feedback. Tasks in which decisions and actions are interleaved—like choosing how to customize an elf as you go—may be more conducive to achieving this state. Original model from Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory.
Why are we drawn to making things right now?
If trying and failing to solve difficult math problems can make us lose confidence in our abilities, then the likely impact of a global pandemic on people’s belief in their ability to exercise control and competence is easy to imagine.
At a time when so little is in our control and it’s easy to feel helpless, making things ourselves—bread, crafts, Legos, home improvement projects—allows us to control and shape our immediate physical environment and reassert our competence. It can also improve our mood, so these activities are repeated.
Most of us are at home a lot these days. Looking around and seeing things we’ve made (the curtains we put up, the blanket we knit, the meal we cooked) can remind us of our non-powerlessness. And because we tend to have a stronger emotional connection to things we’ve made ourselves, making items for our home can simultaneously improve our immediate environment while also making it feel more “ours”.
Designing home products that enhance feelings of “I did it myself”
If we want to create products that support people’s competence without being too prescriptive and undermining their sense of autonomy, what should these products be like? Based on everything we’ve talked about so far, I think to elicit the “I did it myself” feeling in the largest number of people, products should:
Provide enough support and instruction to make everyone feel competent in assembling the product
Allow customization of the product through individuals’ decisions
Be “mistake proof” – constrain the decisions so that every person’s product ends up being more-or-less successful
Integrate customization decisions and action – decisions should be made while putting the product together, not before these actions are started
How does this look in practice?
Here are three home-related products that I think achieve the balance of supporting competence and autonomy. Just as a disclaimer, I’m not saying the products below are all in good taste. If you know me IRL, you know I can be finicky as hell if making decisions for my own environment. But we all have slightly different needs, desires, and preferences. It’s fine to disagree on the modern farmhouse trend.
Example 1: Gallery wall picture frame kit.
Why it works: The frames aren’t all the same size or color, which puts little pressure on people to line them up in neat rows. This significantly lowers the competence needed to complete this project (some people really don’t know how to use a level, amirite?). The different frames also give people the ability to customize how they will be put together, while the pre-selection of colors guarantees that the set will form a cohesive whole. People can also mix in their own items into the set, like the user above has done, adding another level of customization. Finally, what goes inside the frame – photos meaningful to the person assembling the kit—offers a great deal of customization and strengthens the emotional connection to the final product. It’s hard to hate a framed picture of your beloved pup.
Example 2: IKEA FIY (fluff it yourself) lamp.
Why it works: The product comes with simple instructions: crumple, shape, and fluff the lamp layers to create a cloud-like shape. This thing would be really hard to mess up (see the review above). Even if you end up crumpling a sheet too much, you could flatten it out again. Everyone can feel like an expert putting this together. This product also can’t be planned ahead more than one action – you have to complete the first action, evaluate it, and decide on what the next action will be, etc. This interleaves decision and action, which is ideal.
Example 3: Mismatched-matched tiles
Why it works: This one requires a bit more know-how that the frames or the lamp, but tiling isn’t that hard. These tiles make it even easier – they’re pre-selected so that each tile will look more-or-less good next to any of other tiles, while their variety provides some cover for any mistakes. Each tile is made up of smaller tiles that make it look like more work went into the installation. People can select how to arrange the tiles as they go—they don’t need to come up with a master plan of where each tile will go on a surface. This allows people to make decisions based on each previous decision, interleaving decision and action.
As we spend time at home with an increased desire to do things ourselves, I wonder if we’ll see increased success of products like these that allow people to customize their space, while supporting their ability to do so. We’ll see over the next few months.
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