What is surprising is that gift-givers have considerable experience
acting as both gift-givers and gift-recipients, but nevertheless
tend to overspend each time they set out to purchase a meaningful
gift. In the present research, we propose a unique psychological
explanation for this overspending problem—that gift-givers equate
how much they spend with how much recipients will appreciate
the gift (i.e., the more expensive the gift, the stronger a gift-recipient’s
feelings of appreciation). Although a link between gift price
and feelings of appreciation might seem intuitive to gift-givers,
such an assumption may be unfounded. Indeed, we propose that
gift-recipients will be less inclined to base their feelings of appreciation
on the magnitude of a gift than givers assume.