The "Liking-Loving Tendency" causes investors to identify personally with their holdings. They ignore faults, favor associated things, and distort facts to maintain positive feelings. This emotional attachment leads them to rationalize bad news and hold deteriorating assets for too long, destroying capital.

A research professional launched a course based on personal passion without proper market validation. This shows how emotional investment can cause experts to ignore the very best practices they preach, especially when the project is their own.

This is the "epistemic IKEA effect": a cognitive bias where teams overvalue their self-constructed arguments and dismiss external expert knowledge. Ideas feel more valid when discovered through personal effort, causing teams to disregard perfectly good research simply because they didn't "suffer" to find it.

Post-mortems of bad investments reveal the cause is never a calculation error but always a psychological bias or emotional trap. Sequoia catalogs ~40 of these, including failing to separate the emotional 'thrill of the chase' from the clinical, objective assessment required for sound decision-making.

The "IKEA Check" is a three-question framework to fight personal bias. 1) Does my conviction come from my work or from evidence? 2) Would I fund this if it weren't my idea? 3) What is my confidence level before and after feedback? This forces a more objective assessment.

Leaders who were correct once in a specific area, like mobile UX in 2015, tend to believe their expertise is universally applicable. This cognitive trap leads them to make poor, unsubstantiated decisions in new domains like AI strategy.

Leaders often fail to separate outcome from process. A good result from a bad decision (like a risky bet paying off) reinforces poor judgment. Attributing success solely to skill and failure to bad luck prevents process improvement and leads to repeated errors over time.

The IKEA effect isn't just a feeling; a Harvard Business School study quantified that people value self-assembled items 63% higher than identical pre-assembled ones. This cognitive bias explains why product teams overvalue their own "wobbly" creations, regardless of objective quality.

When emotionally invested, even seasoned professionals can ignore their own expertise. The speaker, a researcher, sought validation from biased sources like friends instead of conducting objective market research, proving that personal attachment can override professional discipline.