For many of us, the holiday season entails giving and receiving gifts. If you were on the receiving end, I invite you to reflect on how any gifts given to you made you feel in light of the findings of a recent line of research, soon to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research. If you were on the giving end, I invite you to reflect on how any gifts given by you made the recipients feel. The recipients appreciate an expensive gift more than the same expensive gift when coupled with a less expensive one. Makes little sense, right? More should be better, especially in a materialistic world. The gift-givers evaluate the worth and impact of what they give by adding up the worth and impact of individual gifts, whereas gift-receivers evaluate what they get as a whole, in effect averaging together the worth and impact of the individual gifts. On average, an expensive gift and a modest gift are less impressive than the expensive gift alone. This phenomenon is named presenter's paradox, and it provides food for thought and not just about literal gifts.
Recipients and presenters apparently have different mindsets, and they may not understand the perspective of the other. As an attending physician, the holiday season for me always coincides with the end of the fall semester, when I talk to students who did not do as well as they wished in classes I teach. They usually offer explanations, which I take seriously, but the more explanations a student offers, the more likely I am to hear them as mere excuses. One good explanation is enough and certainly better than a good one followed by two or three not-so-good ones!
On a more positive note, consider how we savor positive events of all sorts, not just holiday gifts. If more than one good thing happens at a time, what then? Do we average them together or sum them? We would be better served by summing up their impacts. That may be difficult to do, so a more practical suggestion is to experience one positive event at a time and not get distracted by others.
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| Luke 1:76-78“And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven” |
Quote of the Day:
When all else fails, read the instructions.
--Cahn's Axiom
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