Better late than never? Gift givers overestimate the relationship harm from giving late gifts
研究发现送礼者系统性地高估了迟到礼物对关系的负面影响，因为他们认为迟到会传递关心不足的信号，而收礼者并不这么认为。
Abstract Past work has found that there is often a mismatch between the types of gifts that individuals send and the types of gifts that recipients would prefer to receive. Moving beyond gift choice, the present work explores a novel type of giver–recipient mismatch—beliefs about the importance of sending an on‐time gift. Specifically, the current work offers evidence that gift givers systematically overestimate the negative impact that a late occasion‐based gift will have on their relationship with the recipient, which occurs because gift givers believe that sending a late gift will signal that they care about the recipient to a lesser extent than what the recipient perceives. As such, gift givers' overestimation of relationship harm from a late gift is attenuated when they signal care in some other way (e.g., with the amount of effort put into creating the gift). Finally, we explore the consequences of degree of gift lateness as well as the decision to not send an occasion‐based gift at all on gift givers' overestimation of relationship harm.