When you’re buying gifts for people this holiday season, you might be thinking about how your loved ones will react the moment they open them. Will they be truly happy and thankful — or will you see disappointment flicker across their faces?
If you’ve given terrible gifts in the past, this focus on the moment of exchange might be why. A new paper that reviews decades of research on gift-giving suggests one common mistake people make is thinking too much about how recipients will react to their gift initially, rather than how it might benefit them in the long run.