The more effort you put into something, the more value you see in it.
The best-known example of this may be the “IKEA effect,” wherein people place higher value on the IKEA products they have bought and assembled—because of the assembly effort involved.
Effort justification is one route to resolve lingering cognitive dissonance, a state of mind where we hold two “dissonant” views.
Prior to effort justification, we may look at a completed task and wonder if it was really worth our effort. We hold up the result on one hand and the effort on the other…and grimace.
Effort justification steps in and consoles us, soothing us: “Yes, this really was worth the effort!”
There are issues with this helpful mechanism, of course, because we may end up valuing work that, well, we really shouldn’t.
In my industry, projects and their project teams present a classic example. Not every project merits an award submission, but few teams want to hear that, given the hundreds or even thousands of hours they’ve put into it.
Taylor Coe 