Why do we cling to what we create
Motivation / / December 19, 2019
Dan Ariely (Dan Ariely)
Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University (USA), founder of the Center for retrospective studies. Best-selling author "Positive irrationality" and "The truth about sin."
Dan ArielyMotivation - a very complex phenomenon that we often misunderstood. If you understand what motivation is and how it works, you can build a career and personal life, to be more productive, satisfied and happy.
But how to increase the motivation? Before answering this question, Dan Ariely offers to remember what happens when we create or collect something with their hands, such as furniture from IKEA.
IKEA effect
IKEA creators once came up with a brilliant idea. They offered to customers to buy boxes of parts and assemble their own furniture, relying on the help extremely confusing instructions.
Many people like a simple minimalist design of the IKEA furniture, but to collect something, you need to surprise a lot of time and effort. Instruction is often just confusing.
And do not say that the assembly process is a pleasure, but we still feel proud, looking at the result of their labors. Over time, this feeling only grows. This phenomenon is called "IKEA effectยป. Although, of course, the IKEA was not the first company to realize the value of self-assembly.
In the 1940s an American company P. Duff and Sons began selling ready-made dry mixture baking. It was only necessary to add them in the water, stir everything, pour into a mold and bake in the oven for half an hour.
But surprisingly, these mixtures have not enjoyed success with the housewives. It was not in the taste of the product, and that it was too easy to prepare. At the housewives did not have the feeling that this bakery - it is their own creation.
Then the producers changed the composition of the mixture and it was removed from the egg powder and milk powder. Now, when it was necessary to add yourself eggs, butter and milk, the hostess felt that actually participated in the creation of a dessert and are willing to buy the dry mixture.
Expending more effort to establish some kind of object, we no longer appreciate it
To study the effect of IKEA, Dan Ariely and colleagues Michael Norton and Daniel MOKON conducted an experimentThe IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love.. They asked participants to make origami experiment for a small hourly fee. All were given colored paper and standard instructions explaining how to bend the paper to get Zhuravliki and frogs.
Make origami harder than it looks. And since all the participants were new to this business, the results have turned out not very pretty. Then the two groups of participants: the founders (who folded origami) and customers (who is not a master anything) - were asked to determine the price for the resulting products. It turned out that the creators were willing to pay for their crafts to five times more than the buyers.
Imagine that you - one of the creators. Do you realize that others do not see the result of your labors in the same light as you do? Or do you think that they fully share your admiration?
Before answering this question, think small children. They are self-centered view of the world: they think that if they close their eyes, they not only will not see the others, but also the surrounding will not see them. Over time we grow up from this delusion. But if we are able to completely get rid of it? It turns out, no. Love for his creatures is really blind. The creators of this experiment not only overestimated their crafts, but were sure that other people perceive them with the same enthusiasm.
But that's not all. Then the researchers complicated experiment, and asked the participants to fold origami instructions of shorthand, which were only arrows showing what and how to fold, but there was no explanation.
New origami turned out even worse past, buyers have for them even lower price. But the creators have estimated their new products, even higher than that of the first origami experiment, because in the second case they had to try harder. This proved that the amount of effort affects our attitude to the fruits of their labors.
How is it related to motivation
These experiments with origami were not directly linked to one of the main engines of motivation - our sense of individuality.
The behavior of the participants showed that we motivate the need for recognition, a sense of satisfaction from the work done and the knowledge that we are creating something new.
Creating something with their own handsWe become attached to this thing and we feel that it expresses our personality. Especially it is typical for people of creative professions.
But this applies to all the others. Imagine, for example, that you buy shoes. You can completely personalize their shoes by themselves not only the color of shoes, but also the color of the laces and lining.
It would seem that this desire is due only to our preferences if we like the red color more blue, it means that we choose the red shoes. But it's not just preferences. When choosing a certain color, we seem to contribute to the creation of a product and make it your own.
The more effort we make, the more likely we will like the final result. This principle works in other spheres of life.
However, if we can afford it, we hire people, so that they were cleaned in our house or take care of our garden, so as not to waste time on such mundane matters. But in the pursuit of productivity, we are moving away from the results of their own labor. So do not forget: the efforts will make the end result more valuable.