[FRIAM] New philosophy book

Wed Aug 19 05:48:59 EDT 2026

FWIW, here's some AI slop for you. >8^D

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Evidence across social psychology and adjacent behavioral research shows a reliable tendency to value **self-made products, ideas, and performances** more positively than equivalent others’ outputs, though the effect is not universal and depends on context (Norton et al., 2012; Pelled et al., 2025; Zheng & Miller, 2019; John & Robins, 1994). The strongest direct evidence comes from the **IKEA effect** literature, while self-enhancement and ownership-bias studies show related but more qualified forms of the same pattern (Norton et al., 2012; Pelled et al., 2025; Krueger et al., 2017; Zheng & Miller, 2018).

    Preference for One’s Own Work

Evidence Strength

Claim

Evidence strength: Strong (9/10)

People **pay more for self-made objects**than for identical objects made by others, and a meta-analysis across 55 studies found a **moderate overall effect**of self-assembly on valuation, //d//= 0.57 (Norton et al., 2012; Pelled et al., 2025).

Evidence strength: Strong (8/10)

People often treat their **amateur creations**as comparable in value to experts’ work and expect others to agree, showing overvaluation rather than simple preference matching (Norton et al., 2012; Norton et al., 2011).

Evidence strength: Moderate (6/10)

Similar self-favoring bias appears in **idea selection and self-evaluation**, but it is more conditional: design professionals favored their own low-value ideas, and people rate their own performance somewhat more positively than peers or staff do (Zheng & Miller, 2019; Zheng & Miller, 2018; John & Robins, 1994).

**Figure 1:** Strength of evidence for preferring one’s own work

    Experimental Findings

The classic experiments show that labor itself can raise valuation even when there is **no customization** and the product is mundane and utilitarian, such as assembled storage boxes (Norton et al., 2012). The same pattern extends to hedonic creations like origami and Legos, and people can value their own poorly made outputs as highly as expert-made ones (Norton et al., 2012; Marsh et al., 2017).

This bias is not limited to adults or to one culture. It appears by about **age 5** (Marsh et al., 2017), and British and Indian children both valued their own created toys over identical copies, whether they built alone or collaboratively (Marsh et al., 2022).

    Mechanisms and Limits

  *

    **Successful completion matters**; when people fail to finish or must destroy what they built, the IKEA effect drops out (Norton et al., 2012; Norton et al., 2011).

  *

    Feelings of **competence and pride** appear to mediate higher valuation of self-made products (Mochon et al., 2012).

  *

    **Ownership alone** can be sufficient for some self-biases, as people prioritized a newly owned voice even without producing it themselves (Payne et al., 2024).

  *

    Evidence is **mixed on mechanisms**; developmental work found ownership alone did not explain children’s valuation of their own creations, and effort amount did not moderate the effect in 5- to 6-year-olds (Marsh et al., 2017).

    Related Self-Enhancement Evidence

In performance judgments, people are on average **slightly more positive about themselves** than peers or assessors are, and they are less accurate judging themselves than judging peers (John & Robins, 1994). People also show self-enhancing attributions after success more reliably than self-protective attributions after failure, so the broader bias is real but not as general or symmetrical as folk wisdom suggests (Miller & Ross, 1975).

There is also evidence in creative domains: participants ranked **self-made artworks** as more self-relevant, more owned, and more liked than other-made paintings, although one study found questionnaire preference without a matching visual-attention effect for copied works (Straffon et al., 2022). In professional design, ownership bias was strongest for **worse ideas**, suggesting that preferring one’s own work can impair selection quality rather than track objective merit (Zheng & Miller, 2019; Zheng & Miller, 2018).

Across these literatures, the evidence supports the proverb-like claim that people often **praise their own pot**: they reliably overvalue their own creations, and they sometimes overrate their own ideas or performance relative to others. The clearest and strongest evidence is for **self-made objects**, while evidence for broader self-favoring judgment is real but more conditional and mechanism-dependent.

//These search results were found and analyzed using Consensus, an AI-powered search engine for research. Try it at https://consensus.app. © 2026 Consensus NLP, Inc. Personal, non-commercial use only; redistribution requires copyright holders’ consent.//

    References

John, O., & Robins, R. (1994). Accuracy and bias in self-perception: individual differences in self-enhancement and the role of narcissism.. //Journal of personality and social psychology, 66 1//, 206-19. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.66.1.206

Krueger, J., Heck, P., & Asendorpf, J. (2017). Self-enhancement: Conceptualization and Assessment. 28. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.91

Marsh, L., Kanngiesser, P., & Hood, B. (2017). When and how does labour lead to love? The ontogeny and mechanisms of the IKEA effect.. //Cognition, 170//, 245-253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.10.012

Marsh, L., Gil, J., & Kanngiesser, P. (2022). The Influence of Collaboration and Culture on the IKEA Effect: Does Cocreation Alter Perceptions of Value in British and Indian Children?. //Developmental Psychology, 58//, 662 - 670. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001321

Miller, D. T., & Ross, M. (1975). Self-serving biases in the attribution of causality: Fact or fiction?. //Psychological Bulletin, 82//, 213-225. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076486

Mochon, D., Norton, M., & Ariely, D. (2012). Bolstering and restoring feelings of competence via the IKEA effect. //International Journal of Research in Marketing, 29//, 363-369. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2012.05.001

Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2012). The 'IKEA Effect': When Labor Leads to Love. //Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22//, 453-460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2011.08.002

Norton, M., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2011). Author ' s personal copy Research Report The IKEA effect : When labor leads to love.

Payne, B., Addlesee, A., Rieser, V., & McGettigan, C. (2024). Self-ownership, not self-production, modulates bias and agency over a synthesised voice.. //Cognition, 248//, 105804. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105804

Pelled, A., Demetriades, S. Z., & Walter, N. (2025). Labor Leads to Love, Right? A Meta‐Analysis of the IKEA Effect. //Psychology & Marketing, 43//, 388 - 400. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.70064

Straffon, L., Agnew, G., Desch-Bailey, C., Van Berlo, E., Goclowska, G., & Kret, M. (2022). Visual attention bias for self-made artworks.. //Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts//. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000451

Zheng, X., & Miller, S. R. (2019). Is Ownership Bias Bad? The Influence of Idea Goodness and Creativity on Design Professionals Concept Selection Practices. //Journal of Mechanical Design//. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4042081

Zheng, X., & Miller, S. R. (2018). Uncovering Ownership Bias: The Influence of Idea Goodness and Creativity on Design Professionals’ Concept Selection Practices. //Volume 7: 30th International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology//. https://doi.org/10.1115/detc2018-85964

On 8/18/26 11:11 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> A shoe from your direction. Ouch.
>
> FRIAM's Second Law in action: If a theory is suspiciously elegant, somebody on the
> list will throw a shoe at it.
>
> -J.
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> Date: 8/19/26 12:09 AM (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] New philosophy book
>
> I do not prefer my paintings to Van Gogh's.  You must mean something else.
>
>
-- 
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ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
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