EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior
Prof. Dan Ariely, Duke University
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E How Effort Leads to Fondness of the End Result Notes taken on April 24, 2017 by Edward Tanguay |
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experiment
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gave people sheet of paper with randomly arranged letters
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asked them to find pairs of letters
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paid them, but less for each sheet they did
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each time they turned in a sheet they could define if they wanted to continue
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three conditions
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1. acknowledged condition: when they handed it in, the experimenter looked at it, said "ah-hah" and put it down
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participants stopped at $0.15 per page
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2. ignored condition: experimenter didn't say anything and just put it on the pile
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participants stopped at $0.30 per page, just like the shredder
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3. the shredder: took the sheet and put it through a shredder
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participants stopped at $0.30 per page
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results
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acknowledgement increases motivation
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ignoring people is just as demotivating as shredding their work
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it's easy to keep people motivated, and it is easy to make them demotivated
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IKEA
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bought a chest for toys
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was difficult to assemble
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but because one assembles it, one has an personal attachment to it
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it's not that I don't remember the agony of building it, but I am fond of it
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the more effort you put into something, the more you admire it
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cake mixes
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it was thought that housewives would love these
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the reality was that people did not like the cake mixes
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the egg theory
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if you take powder and you mix it with water and you bake it, it is too easy for you to take credit for it
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it feels like opening a can and pouring it in a pot
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so they took egg and the milk powder out of the mix and required the customer to add these ingredients themselves
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it became more popular
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the lesson is that you can make a product require more effort on the part of the customer and nevertheless like it more
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origami experiment
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first
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gave people a sheet of instructions to create a piece of origami art
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reality that what people created was not that good
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asked other people to evaluate them
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the builders felt their own was worth more
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the builders thought that others would love it as well
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second
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one group got instruction with less text, so these were uglier
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the uglier ones felt better about their own
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more effort creates love
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but if someone made something that did not resemble origami at all, they had no attachment to it
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products
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allow customers to design your own products
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allow customers to build their own
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make customers have to put a lot of effort into it
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but you don't want to make them invest so much effort that they can't create the product at all