Now, you might ask, “Aren’t there areas—like scientific research—where the all-too-human preference for one’s own ideas takes a backseat? Where an idea is judged on its objective merits?”
As an academic, I wish I could tell you that the tendency to fall in love with our own ideas never happens in the clean, objective world of science. After all, we like to think that scientists care most about evidence and data and that they all work collectively, without pride or prejudice, toward a joint goal of advancing knowledge. This would be nice, but the reality is that science is carried out by human beings. As such, scientists are constrained by the same 20-watt-per-hour computing device (the brain) and the same biases (such as a preference for our own creations) as other mortals. In the scientific world, the Not-Invented-Here bias is fondly called the “toothbrush theory.” The idea is that everyone wants a toothbrush, everyone needs one, everyone has one, but no one wants to use anyone else’s.
“Wait,” you might argue. “It is very good for scientists to be overattached to their own theories. After all, this could motivate them to spend weeks and months in small laboratories and basements laboring over boring, tedious tasks.” Indeed, the Not-Invented-Here bias can create a higher level of commitment and cause people to follow through on ideas that are their own (or that they think are their own).
But as you’ve probably guessed, the Not-Invented-Here bias can also have a dark side. Consider a famous example of someone who fell too deeply in love with his own ideas and the cost associated with this fixation. In his book Blunder, Zachary Shore describes how Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, fell hard for direct current (DC) electricity. A Serbian inventor named Nikola Tesla came to work for Edison and developed alternating current electricity (AC) under Edison’s supervision. Tesla argued that unlike direct current, alternating current could not only illuminate lightbulbs over greater distances, it could also power gigantic industrial machines using the same electrical grid. In short, Tesla claimed that the modern world required AC—and he was right. Only AC could provide the scale and scope needed for extensive use of electricity.
Edison, however, was so protective of his creation that he dismissed Tesla’s ideas as “splendid, but utterly impractical.” Edison could have had the patent for AC since Tesla had worked for him when he invented it, but his love for DC was too strong.
Edison set out to discredit AC as dangerous, which indeed at the time it was. The worst that could happen to anyone who touched a live DC wire would be a powerful shock—jolting, but not lethal. Touching a live wire running AC, on the other hand, could kill instantly. The early AC systems of the late nineteenth century in New York City were made up of crisscrossed, overhanging, exposed wires. Repair workers had to cut through dead lines and reconnect faulty ones without adequate safeguards (which modern systems now have). Occasionally, people were electrocuted by alternating current.
One especially horrific case occurred on the afternoon of October 11, 1889. Above a crowded intersection in midtown Manhattan, a repairman named John Feeks was cutting through dead wires when he accidentally touched a live one. The shock was so intense that it cast him into a net of cables. The conjunction of charges ignited his body, sending streaks of blue light from his feet, mouth, and nose. Blood dripped down to the street below as onlookers gaped in horrified wonder. The case was precisely what Edison needed to bolster his charges about AC’s danger and thereby the superiority of his beloved DC.
As a competitive inventor, Edison was not about to let the future of direct current be dictated by chance, so he started a big public relations campaign against alternating current, attempting to generate public fear about the competing technology. He initially demonstrated the dangers of AC by directing his technicians to electrocute stray cats and dogs, and used this to show the potential risks of alternating current. As his next step, he secretly funded the development of an electric chair based on alternating current for the purposes of capital punishment. The first person ever to be executed in the electric chair, William Kemmler, was slowly cooked alive. Not Edison’s finest moment, to be sure, but it was a very effective and rather frightening demonstration of the dangers of alternating current. But despite all of Edison’s attempts to foil it, alternating current eventually prevailed.
Edison’s folly is also a demonstration of how badly things can go when we become too attached to our own ideas because, despite the dangers of AC, it also had a much higher potential to power the world. Fortunately for most of us, our irrational attachments to our ideas rarely end as badly as Edison’s.
**
The experiments we carried out to test the IKEA effect showed that when we make things ourselves, we value them more. Our experiments testing the Not-Invented-Here bias demonstrated that the same thing happens with our ideas. Regardless of what we create—a toy box, a new source of electricity, a new mathematical theorem—much of what really matters to us is that it is our creation. As long as we create it, we tend to feel rather certain that it’s more useful and important than similar ideas that other people come up with.
