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Entry 087 of 93Sourced

The IKEA Effect

People value a solution more once they've had a hand in building it, even if their contribution barely changes the result.

How it sounds

  1. You Have the buyer help build the proposal, not just review it
  2. Buyer (invests real effort, filling in numbers or choosing options)
  3. You Present the plan as something you built together
  4. Result They defend and value it more than a finished plan handed to them

The rest of this entry is in the full archive

  • Why a proposal the buyer helped fill in survives internal pushback better than a finished one
  • Where the IKEA effect breaks down, and stops working
  • How to structure a working session so their labor counts, not just looks that way
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More in Persuasion principles

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  1. Put a defensible number on the table first.
  2. (negotiates relative to that number, even if it was arbitrary)
  3. Frame the option you want against a higher reference point
Full archive
Persuasion principlesSourced

Anchoring

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Science (1974)
  1. How do we know this will actually work for us?
  2. Across the last dozen firms we did this for, the bottleneck was almost always X.
  3. They relax, hearing guidance instead of a pitch.
Persuasion principlesSourced

Authority

Robert Cialdini, Influence (1984)
  1. Make the request, then add "but you're free to say no."
  2. (feels their autonomy respected, and agrees more often, not less)
  3. Compliance goes up compared to the same ask without the line
Persuasion principlesSourced

But You Are Free

Nicolas Guéguen and Alexandre Pascual, Current Research in Social Psychology (2000)