Many years ago, Dan Ariely bought a cabinet from IKEA. IKEA is a famous furniture store that sells boxes of furniture parts. People who buy them have to put all the parts together themselves. It took Ariely hours to build his cabinet. Ariely didn’t really enjoy himself when he was trying to put all the parts together. However, after he finished, he felt quite good about himself and his cabinet. Later, he found that he loved his cabinet more than any of his other furniture.

Ariely wanted to know if anyone shared his feelings, so he did a fun origami study. He invited two groups of people to join his study. He called one group “builders” and the other group “buyers.” Builders were told to make origami, like paper frogs or paper birds. When they finished, they were asked how much they would spend on their works. Ariely then showed the origami to buyers and asked them how much they would pay for them. The two groups gave very different answers. Though buyers would pay only five cents for builders’ origami, builders would spend 25 cents! Interestingly, builders believed others would think their works were good enough to cost that much money!

Ariely’s study showed that he was not alone in his IKEA experience — we just love things more, sometimes blindly, when we make them ourselves. Ariely called it “the IKEA effect.”