Gabrielle S. Adams

The Gifts We Keep on Giving: Documenting and Destigmatizing the Regifting Taboo

Five studies examined whether the practice of regifting—a social taboo—is as offensive to the original givers as potential regifters assume. Participants who imagined regifting a gift (receivers) thought that the original giver would be more offended than participants who imagined that their gifts were regifted (givers) reported feeling. Specifically, receivers viewed regifting as similar in offensiveness to throwing gifts away, yet givers clearly preferred the former. This asymmetry in emotional reactions to regifting was driven by an asymmetry in beliefs about entitlement. Givers believed that the act of gift giving passed title to the gift on to receivers, so that receivers were free to decide what to do with the gift; in contrast, receivers believed that givers retained some say in how their gifts were used. Finally, an intervention designed to destigmatize regifting by introducing a different normative standard (i.e., National Regifting Day) corrected the asymmetry in beliefs about entitlement and increased regifting.

Punishing the Perpetrator Decreases Compensation for Victims

Why do victims sometimes not receive the help they need? One reason may be that people believe punishing perpetrators restores justice, which makes them less willing to help victims if the perpetrator has been punished. Participants who were first asked how much to punish a perpetrator subsequently recommended less compensation for the victim relative to participants who were asked about compensation first. In contrast, participants punished perpetrators to the same degree regardless of whether they were first asked about compensation (Study 1). These effects also held when a third party administered the initial response (Studies 2 and 3). Punishment increased people’s belief that justice had been restored, which decreased their desires for victim compensation (Study 3). Thus, the extent to which individuals are concerned about victims is influenced by whether they first consider perpetrator punishment.

Affective antecedents of revenge.

We propose that revenge responses are often influenced more by affective reactions than by deliberate decision making as McCullough et al. suggest. We review social psychological evidence suggesting that justice judgments and reactions may be determined more by emotions than by cognitions.

WHAT ARE YOU SAVING BY FACE

Research by Dr Gabrielle Adams holds the nonverbal expression of ‘sorry’ to financial account