Why You Think You're a Terrible Friend (But You're Not)
Psych 🧠 - 370/500
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What is it?
Today’s research paper examines how gift-givers perceive the impact of late gifts on their relationships with recipients.
It argues that givers systematically overestimate the negative consequences of giving a late gift, particularly for occasion-based gifts (e.g., birthdays, Christmas).
This misperception stems from an asymmetry: givers focus on the perceived lack of care signaled by lateness, while recipients are more forgiving and tend to appreciate the gift regardless of timing.
Major Findings:
Givers overestimate relationship harm: Across five studies using a mix of real-life gift giving, hypothetical scenarios, and online experiments, gift-givers consistently overestimated the negative impact of a late gift on the recipient's perception of the relationship.
Asymmetry in perceived care: Givers believe a late gift signals a lack of care, while recipients don't interpret lateness as a significant indicator of the giver's feelings. This difference in perspective drives the overestimation of relationship harm.
Occasion-based gifts are more sensitive to timing: The negative effect of lateness is amplified for gifts tied to special occasions compared to non-occasion-based gifts, due to stronger social norms and expectations surrounding timely gift-giving.
Magnitude of lateness matters, but less than givers think: While greater lateness (e.g., 2 months vs. 2 days) does increase perceived relationship harm, the effect is less pronounced than gift-givers anticipate.
Moderating role of gift-giving norms: The overestimation effect is stronger for individuals who endorse stronger social norms around gift-giving.
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What do I need to know:
Late gifts aren't as bad as givers think: Recipients are generally more forgiving of lateness than givers anticipate, and a late gift is often better than no gift at all.
The giver-recipient perspective gap is crucial: Givers overestimate the negative impact of lateness because they focus on their own perspective and fail to account for the recipient's perspective.
Occasion-based gifts require greater attention to timing: Social norms and expectations play a stronger role for occasion-based gifts, making timely delivery more important.
Source:
https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jcpy.1446