Today’s Idea
We assume more information equals better choices. But past a certain point, the flood works against us. Intelligence officers in the 1980s named this the Firehouse Effect — too much data blasting at once, drowning out the signal.
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The Betty Crocker Effect
The problem wasn’t the cake. Blind taste tests showed it was perfectly fine. The problem was pride. Housewives at the time felt guilty serving something that carried no trace of their own effort. “I didn’t really make this,” they thought.
So General Mills (the maker of Betty Crocker) made a small change: they required bakers to crack in a fresh egg and add milk. Suddenly sales took off. The cakes weren’t objectively better, but the cooks felt they had created them, and that made all the difference.
Psychologists later named this the Betty Crocker Effect, and today it’s often called the IKEA effect: people place more value on things they’ve put effort into, even if the result is wobbly, imperfect, or no better than an off-the-shelf version.
You’ve felt it yourself:
Furniture you struggled to assemble feels oddly precious.
Projects you’ve led seem more brilliant than equally good ones from colleagues.
Relationships feel deeper when you’ve invested time and care.
Hobbies that took effort to master become part of your identity.
Effort creates ownership. When your fingerprints are on the outcome, you defend it, nurture it, and value it more.
But the effect cuts both ways. It explains why we cling to bad projects, defend weak ideas, and refuse to pivot (because sweat blinds us to flaws).
It makes us confuse effort with worth.
How You Can Apply This
Add effort where pride matters. Want people to care? Don’t hand them the finished product. Give them a role. Let a teammate make one key decision. Let your kids crack the egg.
Beware the sunk-cost trap. Ask: If I hadn’t already put in this effort, would I still choose this path? If not, effort is clouding your judgment.
Reframe the struggle. When something feels hard, remind yourself: the difficulty is what makes it meaningful later. Effort is the ingredient that adds pride.
What To Remember
Until next time,
— Quiet Moves