All of the effort. A guest post by Nkechinyelu Agulefo,

To me, the effort heuristic is the most interesting heuristic of them all.  The effort heuristic is when the value of an object is judged based on the amount of effort that went into the production of the object.  In other words, if someone puts a great amount of effort into something, that person is more prone to believe the outcome should yield great results. A real life example is when I submitted my final biology lab last semester. I put so much effort into those ten pages and expected to get an A.  I spent hours on the lab report and even went as far as citing five more than the required sources which is so unlike me because I’m not an overachiever. 

(Me during the writing process.)

Long story short I got an A- and I didn't understand why.  I was devastated.  I met with the TA and pleaded my case but she didn't change my grade. I even bought her coffee with my River Hawk Dollars and at the end of my appeal she told me “thanks for the coffee but I’m not giving you an A.”  

 This is where the effort heuristic came into play.  I genuinely thought I deserved an A because of the amount of labor I put in; meanwhile my TA most likely didn’t think the same.

  Here’s another instance where the effort heuristic comes into play. If I visited an art exhibit and they showed me a painting that was made by a twelve year old and asked me to guess the price, I would probably say, “free.”  However, if they told me that that same painting was made by Jean-Michel Basquiat and asked me to guess the price I would say “four years’ worth of my tuition.” I mean it’s Basquiat, this guy is well known and has made paintings in Armani suits.  Even though the paintings are both unique and not very different, to me at least, I would definitely overestimate the price of Basquiat's painting and underestimate the price of the 12 year-old’s painting.

                                        12 year old Megrelishvili Tata's painting

VS.

JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT

Another example of the effort heuristic is if someone was to give me $200, I would spend it without caring because it was effortlessly given to me and everybody knows free money is the best money. However, if it were to come out of my paycheck then I would definitely be more cautious while spending it.  In this case the worth of the money changed when it was coming out of my pocket as opposed to when it was given to me with no strings attached. Those are the basics of effort heuristics and I know for a fact it will continue to occur in the future, I am human after all.

Justin Kruger, Derrick Wirtz, Leaf Van Boven, T.William Altermatt, The effort heuristic, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 40, Issue 1, January 2004, Pages 91-98, ISSN 0022-1031,http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1031(03)00065-9.