Receiving Money-Saving Gifts Can Make People Feel Ashamed And Embarrassed

By Emily Reynolds Looking for the perfect gift can be a pleasure and a curse: the joy of picking exactly the right thing vs. the anxiety that you’ve completely missed the mark. Whether to get somebody something luxurious but impractical or something with utility is another common dilemma. It’s also one that may have unintended consequences: while some practical gifts — those that save someone time, for example — can be appealing and well-received, others may fall short. If you were thinking of getting that special someone a gift with the intention of saving them money, for example, think again — you might end up making them feel ashamed, according to research recently published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. If someone is short on money, it’s possible that a gift designed to help them save more could be well received. But, Alice Lee-Yoon from UCLA and colleagues hypothesise, the opposite is actually more likely to happen: people are likely to feel ashamed of such a gift and see it as an indication of either a lower status overall or a greater differential in status between themselves and the gift-giver. In the first study, 405 participants were asked to write about a gift they had recently been given: either a gift that they felt was intended to save them time, or one intended to save them money. They then rated how much the gift made them feel guilty, embarrassed, ashamed, proud, brave and good, and ranked their status in society and wh...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Emotion Social Source Type: blogs