To capture appreciation, each participant answered four questions.
Women were asked ‘‘To what extent do you appreciate the
ring?”, ‘‘To what extent do you feel grateful for the ring?”, ‘‘To what
extent do you feel thankful for the ring?”, and ‘‘To what extent do
you feel pleased about receiving the ring?” Men were asked the
same four questions, but the questions were rephrased slightly to
suit their role as givers. For example, the question ‘‘To what extent
do you appreciate the ring?” was rewritten for men so that it read
‘‘To what extent does she appreciate the ring?” Both men and women
were asked to provide their ratings for each of these four
questions using a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = ‘‘Not at all” to
7 = ‘‘To a great extent.” The four items had a high level of overall
reliability (Cronbach’s a = .89 for men and a = .79 for women), so
we averaged them together into one composite variable, which
we refer to as appreciation.