Lighthouse is a ride in Legoland Billund, Denmark. It looks like a small-sized drop tower exclusively designed for kids or even toddlers. I expected young riders would experience free-fall initially, followed by modest deceleration.
Surprisingly, it is not a drop tower. Instead, riders need to pull the rope until they hit the top. Legoland website explains it.
Children gain insight into themselves when they hoist themselves up by their own strength to the LEGO® Lighthouse Keeper and the spectacular view of Pirate Land and Pirate Island. Climbing down again is also fun – and a little challenging.
Many European riders actually enjoyed this labor intensive, manual ride. It is a stack contrast with electronically powered, automatic drop towers in Korea. Their difference seems to be in line with the different train ticket system between UK and Korea. Europeans seem to embrace and enjoy manual labor, whereas Asians tend to avoid it.
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Reference
Kruger, J., Wirtz, D., Van Boven, L., & Altermatt, T. W. (2004). The effort heuristic. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(1), 91–98.
The research presented here suggests that effort is used as a heuristic for quality. Participants rating a poem (Experiment 1), a painting (Experiment 2), or a suit of armor (Experiment 3) provided higher ratings of quality, value, and liking for the work the more time and effort they thought it took to produce. Experiment 3 showed that the use of the effort heuristic, as with all heuristics, is moderated by ambiguity: Participants were more influenced by effort when the quality of the object being evaluated was difficult to ascertain. Discussion centers on the implications of the effort heuristic for everyday judgment and decision-making.
“On arrival to the lab, participants were told that the experiment concerned the way in which people evaluate of poetry. Participants read ‘‘Order’’ by Van Walleghen (1966)… Participants randomly assigned to the low-effort condition were told that Van Walleghen spent 4 h on the poem, whereas participants in the high-effort condition were told that the poet spent 18 h.” (pg. 93)
