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SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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Sentimental value is the value derived from an emotionally-laden item’s associations
with significant others, or special events or times in one’s life. The present research demonstrates
that when faced with the choice between sentimentally valuable gifts and gifts with superficial
attributes that match the preferences of the recipient, givers give the latter much more often than
recipients would prefer to receive such gifts. This asymmetry appears to be driven by givers
feeling relatively certain that preference-matching gifts will be well-liked by recipients, but
relatively uncertain that the same is true for sentimentally valuable gifts. Three studies
demonstrate this gift-giving mismatch and validate the proposed mechanism across a variety of
gift-giving occasions and giver-receiver relationship types. The contribution of these findings to
the gift-giving literature, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.
Keywords: gift-giving, self-other decision making, uncertainty, sentimental value.
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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An ideal gift can take many shapes. Gifts related to the preferences and tastes of
individuals tend to be well received (Gino & Flynn, 2011), as are gifts that serve as reminders of
special events and relationships (Belk 1988, 1991). This latter type of gift, one we term a
sentimentally valuable gift, is particularly interesting because of its ability to provide a recipient
with happiness for years after the gift exchange (Yang & Galak, 2015). Yet, as we will show,
givers do not give these gifts as often as recipients would like. That is, we will demonstrate that
when faced with the decision of whether to give a gift with superficial attributes that match the
preferences of the recipient or a gift that is likely to act as a reminder of the giver-receiver
relationship, givers give the former more often than recipients would prefer. The question of why
such a mismatch occurs is central to the intent of this paper. Indeed, we propose this arises
because givers feel relatively certain that preference-matching gifts will be well-liked by
recipients, but relatively uncertain the same is true for sentimentally valuable gifts, and, as a
result, shy away from the latter.
Theoretical Background
The utility a recipient extracts from a gift comes in many different forms, however, in the
present research we focus on two. First, a gift may provide a recipient utility in the form of
preference-matching utility. Preference-matching utility is the utility a person derives from an
object when its superficial components match their idiosyncratic tastes. For any given object, the
extent to which these attributes, such as its brand, form factor, appearance, and the like, match an
individual’s tastes, determines its net preference-matching utility to that individual. For example,
a Justin Bieber poster given to a “Belieber,” a gift card to GameStop given to a video game
enthusiast, and a Tom Brady jersey given to a Patriots fan, all have substantial preference-
matching utility as the superficial attributes of the gifts match the respective recipients’
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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idiosyncratic tastes. We emphasize the superficial aspect of preference-matching utility to
differentiate it from another form of utility a recipient may extract from a gift, sentimental value.
Unlike preference-matching utility, which stems from an item’s superficial features
matching one’s tastes, sentimental value stems from an item’s intangible link to a cherished
aspect of one’s life. Specifically, sentimental value is the value derived from an emotionally-
laden object’s associations with significant others, or special events or times in one’s life (Belk,
1988, 1991; Fletcher, 2009; Yang & Galak, 2015).1 This value is acquired immediately, though
in some cases it may increase with time (Yang & Galak, 2015). It is important to note that not all
objects that relate to other people, past events, or another time, are sentimentally valuable. As the
definition suggests, it is critical that at least one of these elements are “significant” or “special”,
and that the object is emotionally-laden. Further, the associations must be with positive aspects
of one’s life (i.e., not associations with a now-disliked person, or an unpleasant event or time;
Yang & Galak, 2015). As an example of a sentimentally valuable object, consider a picture of
someone along with their best friends at high school graduation, that was given to them at their
graduation party. This picture immediately carries strong associations with significant others
(best friends), and a special event (graduation), and thus will likely be quite sentimentally
valuable to the recipient. As another example, a scrapbook given by a loving husband to his wife
on their 10-year wedding anniversary is likely to be immediately sentimentally valuable as the
scrapbook not only leads the wife to think of a significant other (husband), but also a special
event and time in her life (their wedding and subsequent marriage). In both of these cases, the
sentimental value stems from the memory markers the objects provide.
Though it seems possible that some gifts are both high in sentimental value and
preference-matching utility, these two forms of utility are generally negatively correlated (Yang
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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& Galak, 2015), and thus givers may often have to decide whether to give a gift high in
sentimental value and low in preference-matching utility, or vice-versa. To examine if this is
indeed the case, we conducted a pilot study in which seventy-one Amazon Mechanical Turk
workers (56% female, Mage = 33.63) were presented with six tradeoffs from the gift-giving
literature, along with the sentimental value vs. preference-matching utility tradeoff, and indicated
how often they had to make each tradeoff when gift-giving (0 = Never, 100 = Every time I
decide on a gift)2. As is shown in Table 1, the average rating for the sentimental value vs.
preference-matching utility tradeoff was 45.86, which was one of the highest ratings given to any
of the tradeoffs. In other words, the frequency of this tradeoff in everyday gift-giving is quite
high, and even more common than many of the tradeoffs documented in the gift-giving literature
(see Table 1).
--- Insert Table 1 about here ---
Having confirmed the sentimental value vs. preference-matching utility tradeoff is quite
common in everyday gift-giving, the present work asks whether givers and recipients are aligned
with one another when it comes to this tradeoff. Said otherwise, do givers give sentimentally
valuable gifts as often as recipients would prefer? To that end, in our studies, givers and
recipients choose between two gifts: one that is sentimentally valuable and one whose superficial
components match the preferences of the recipient. For recipients, the decision of which gift is
preferred is straightforward. Recipients simply evaluate the utility they know they will extract
from each gift, and then choose whichever gift provides them with more utility. Given that
recipients are merely expressing a preference for the self, and uncertainty regarding the utility
they will extract from each gift is minimal, this should be a fairly easy task, as they just have to
choose the gift they know they will like more. In some cases, this will be the preference-
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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matching gift, while in others it will be the sentimentally valuable gift. On the other hand,
consider the giver’s perspective. Givers will also try to assess the utility the recipient will extract
from each gift, however, since they are choosing for someone else, there is uncertainty regarding
these predictions. Thus, givers have to consider how much utility the recipient will derive from
each gift in terms of distributions of possible utilities (rather than a single, definite utility stream
like recipients consider). Under these circumstances, givers will likely feel relatively certain that
a preference-matching gift (which, by definition, possesses superficial attributes the recipient is
known to like), will be well-liked by the recipient. At the same time, however, givers will likely
feel relatively uncertain that a sentimentally valuable gift (which, does not possess these
attributes), will be well-liked by the recipient. That is, even if a giver believes the sentimentally
valuable gift is superior, there is some uncertainty as to whether the receiver will like it.
Therefore, the giver may instead opt for the preference-matching gift because of its perceived
certainty to be well-liked as compared to the sentimentally valuable gift.
In sum, we predict that givers do not give sentimentally valuable gifts as often as
recipients would prefer, and that this arises because givers feel relatively certain that preference-
matching gifts will be liked by recipients, but relatively uncertain the same is true for
sentimentally valuable gifts.
Study 1
Study 1 serves as an initial test of our hypothesis that givers do not give sentimentally
valuable gifts as often as recipients would prefer. Also, the gift-giving occasion is manipulated
and the social closeness of givers and recipients is measured, to examine whether either of these
factors attenuates our predicted result.
Participants
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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Four hundred and two Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (237 females (59%); Mage =
35.90, SD = 11.51) completed the study in exchange for $0.20. Of those, sixty-six failed the
study attention checks and six responses included duplicate IP addresses (suggesting the
possibility of multiple completions from the same participant). As such, these participants were
excluded, resulting in usable data from three hundred and thirty participants.
Procedure
Study 1 is a 2 (Role: Giver vs. Recipient) by 2 (Occasion: Birthday vs. Going Away
Party) between-subjects design. All participants began the study by writing the name of a friend.
Next, participants were randomly assigned to a Giver or Recipient condition. Givers in the
Birthday (Going Away Party) condition read a vignette in which they were deciding on a gift for
their friend’s birthday (going away party) and had narrowed their choice down to two equally-
priced options: 1) A framed, 20-inch by 30-inch, high-quality photograph of the friend’s favorite
musician (the preference-matching gift); or 2) Developing (in size 8-inch by 10-inch) and
framing a somewhat low-quality photograph of them and their friend on a day they had a lot of
fun together (that was stored on their computer), and giving it as a gift (the sentimentally
valuable gift). Givers then chose which of these two they would give, filled out a three-item scale
to measure social closeness to the recipient in real-life (α = .78; see Appendix A; Ward &
Broniarczyk, 2016), and answered several attention checks. Recipients completed the study in a
similar manner, only from the recipient’s perspective.
Results and Discussion
Our primary measure of interest is the percent of participants choosing the sentimentally
valuable gift across the four conditions. We first ran a logistic regression on this measure with
Role, Occasion, and their interaction entered as predictors. The interaction was not significant (p
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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= .12), however we went on to conduct two planned contrasts to better understand how the
results unfolded for each occasion. As predicted, when deciding on a birthday gift, givers were
less likely to give the sentimentally valuable gift (63.2% (60/97), than recipients were to prefer
to receive it (78.8% (67/85); χ2 (1, N = 180) = 5.30, p = .021, φ = .17). Similarly, when deciding
on a going away gift, givers were less likely to give the sentimentally valuable gift (75.9%
(63/83), than recipients were to prefer to receive it (95.5% (64/67); χ2 (1, N = 150) = 10.00, p =
.001, φ = .27).
Next, we turn to some secondary findings: First, it appears that givers and recipients have
similar beliefs about the importance of the gift giving occasion on giving a sentimentally
valuable gift, as givers were more likely to give the sentimentally valuable gift as a going away
gift (75.9% (63/83)), than as a birthday gift (63.2% (60/97); χ2 (1, N = 178 = 3.37, p = .066, φ =
.14), and recipients were more likely to prefer the sentimentally valuable gift as a going away
gift (95.5% (64/67)), than as a birthday gift (78.8% (67/85); χ2 (1, N = 152) = 5.30, p = .003, φ =
.24), however across both occasions, givers did not give the sentimentally valuable gift nearly as
often as recipients would have liked. Second, it appears that givers and recipients are also
aligned in their beliefs about the importance of social closeness on giving a sentimentally
valuable gift, as a logistic regression on choice of the sentimentally valuable gift with only the
social closeness measure entered as a predictor reveals that the sentimentally valuable gift was
chosen more often when the friend was socially closer (β = .41, p = .001), however social
closeness did not interact with Role (p = .65) or Occasion (p = .43), nor was the three-way
interaction significant (p = .93). These results suggest givers give sentimentally valuable gifts
more often to closer (vs. more distant) friends, but still not nearly as often as these close friends
would like, and that this does not vary based on the occasion.
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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In sum, Study 1’s results provide initial evidence that givers do not give sentimentally
valuable gifts as often as recipients would prefer, and demonstrate this effect is not attenuated by
the occasion or social closeness.
Study 2
Study 2 aims to help rule in an uncertainty explanation for givers’ aversion to giving
sentimentally valuable gifts. Specifically, in Study 2, we induce mindsets of risk-taking being
either fruitful or costly and then assess which gifts givers choose. If givers avoid giving
sentimentally valuable gifts because they are uncertain they will be well-liked by recipients, then
when givers feel positively (vs. negatively) about risk-taking, they should be more likely to give
sentimentally valuable gifts. Importantly, this assumes givers have a belief that sentimentally
valuable gifts could be better-liked than preference-matching gifts, but are reluctant to give them
because preference-matching gifts are sure to be liked at least to some minimal degree. That is,
sentimentally valuable gifts may turn out to be exceptional or turn out to be duds. The
uncertainty as to which type of gift (exceptional or dud) a sentimentally valuable gift turns out to
be, is what leads givers to avoid giving it. If, however, givers are exogenously made to feel
comfortable taking a risk, then they may be more inclined to choose the sentimentally valuable
gift and hope for the best.
Participants
Three hundred and ninety-nine Amazon Mechanical Turk workers (223 females (56%);
Mage = 34.06, SD = 11.62) completed the study in exchange for $0.25. Of those, fifty-one failed
the study attention checks and zero responses included duplicate IP addresses. As such, these
participants were excluded, resulting in usable data from three hundred and forty-eight
participants.
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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Procedure
Participants were randomly assigned to either the Risk Failure or Risk Success condition.
All participants read they were going to be taking two separate studies called the “Risk Study”
and the “Choice Study.” Those in the Risk Failure (Risk Success) condition completed the Risk
Study by writing about a time they took a risk and it failed (paid off). Prior research has used
similar writing tasks to induce such mindsets (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003). Next, all
participants completed the Choice Study. They were presented with a new consent form and new
font was used to make participants believe the studies were unrelated. All participants then read a
vignette that described the participant and a close friend looking at a picture album and coming
across a picture of them riding matching red bicycles as children. The vignette then described the
participant looking for a birthday gift for that friend a few days later, before narrowing his or her
choice down to two bicycles made by top brands: 1) A white bicycle made by Giant Bicycles,
which was the brand the recipient really liked, and he or she owned other gear made by this
brand (the preference-matching gift); or 2) A red bicycle made by Trek Bicycles, which was a
brand the recipient did not have any other gear made by; however this bicycle looked identical to
the bicycles in the picture album, except it was an adult-sized bicycle (the sentimentally valuable
gift). Participants then chose which of these two they would give, explained their choice,
explained what they thought the purpose of each study was, explained whether and how they
thought the two studies were related, and answered several attention checks.
Results and Discussion
Our primary measure of interest is the percent of participants giving the sentimentally
valuable gift across the two conditions. As expected, a chi-square test reveals that givers who
had just written about a time when taking a risk paid off, were more likely to give the
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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sentimentally valuable gift (48.0% (85/177)), compared to givers who had just written about a
time when taking a risk failed (35.1% (60/171); χ2 (1, N = 348) = 6.27, p = .012, φ = .13).
Further, this result is unchanged if the thirty-four participants who correctly guessed how the two
studies were related are excluded from the analysis (47.8% (77/161) vs. 34.6% (53/153); χ2 (1, N
= 314) = 5.62, p = .018, φ = .13).
These results provide evidence in support of an uncertainty account for givers’ reluctance
to giving sentimentally valuable gifts, as the likelihood of givers selecting the sentimentally
valuable gift varied systematically as a function of how comfortable they were with uncertainty.
Study 3
Study 3 serves to extend the generalizability of our findings in three key ways. First, the
study employs several different gifts, rather than the same two for each participant. Second, gifts
are selected for romantic partners (as opposed to friends). Third, and most critically, participants
make choices with real gifts at stake.
Participants
One hundred and seventy-two couples (172 females (50%); Mage = 31.24, SD = 9.62)
from the online panel, Amazon Mechanical Turk, completed the study in exchange for $2.00. Of
those, eighteen failed the study attention checks, five responses included duplicate IP addresses,
and nine did not complete the photo verification portion of the study (see below). As such, these
couples were excluded, resulting in usable data from one hundred and forty couples.
Procedure
Participants were recruited to take part in a “Couples Study” and were informed that both
members of the romantic couple would need to be present to complete the study and that photo
verification of both members would be required to receive payment. To begin, the couple jointly
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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uploaded a picture with both individuals in the frame and the current time in the background (to
ensure both were present). Next, they wrote down their names, and one member of the couple
(the giver) was randomly selected to complete the first part of the study. The other member of
the couple (the recipient) was asked to leave the room for a few minutes and to not communicate
with their partner during this time.
To begin, the giver wrote down what he or she believed was the recipient’s favorite store.
Next, the giver chose which of six sentimentally valuable items (see Appendix B) he or she
thought the recipient would like best. Finally, the giver was informed that he or she would be
asked to choose between giving the recipient either a $25 gift card3 to his or her favorite store
(the preference-matching gift) or the item selected earlier (the sentimentally valuable gift), and
that after the study, some participants’ choices would be realized (i.e., they would be sent
whatever they chose so they could give it to their recipient). After the giver chose, he or she was
told to leave the room for a few minutes, to tell the recipient to return, and to not to communicate
with the recipient during this portion of the study. The recipient then was informed the giver
thought he or she might like the two items mentioned above (i.e., the $25 gift card to the
recipient’s favorite store and the sentimentally valuable item), and then imagined the giver was
choosing between these two items as a gift for the recipient. Next, the recipient indicated which
of the two items he or she would prefer to receive from the giver.
The recipient then retrieved the giver and the pair completed the rest of the study in
which they uploaded a second photo of themselves with the current time in the background (to
ensure both were present), and answered several attention checks. After data collection, a subset
of givers was shipped the item they selected so they could give it to their recipient.
Results and Discussion
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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Our primary measure of interest is the percent of participants choosing the sentimentally
valuable gift across the two conditions. To control for correlated preferences between couples,
the choice data were analyzed using a hierarchical (multi-level) binary logistic model. Individual
choices were nested within couple which was treated as a random effect. Participant role (Giver
vs. Recipient) was treated as a fixed effect. Consistent with our prediction, givers were less likely
to give the sentimentally valuable gift (23.6% (33/140), than recipients were to prefer to receive
it (34.3% (48/140); β = .79, z = 2.32, p = .021).
This result further demonstrates, in an incentive-compatible context, that givers do not
give sentimentally valuable gifts as often as recipients would like.
General Discussion
The studies in this paper demonstrated that givers do not give sentimentally valuable gifts
as often as recipients would prefer, and that this appears to be the result of givers feeling
relatively uncertain about whether sentimentally valuable gifts will be well-liked by recipients.
Our research provides a meaningful contribution to the gift-giving literature as this
literature has investigated several of the tradeoffs givers often confront (see Table 1 references),
but is mute on the sentimental value vs. preference-matching utility tradeoff that is present in
many gifting decisions. Further, our proposed mechanism, that givers’ fears of getting it wrong
prevents them from getting it right4, is also novel to the gift-giving literature. We believe our
findings are considerably surprising when one considers the work in egocentric projection bias
demonstrating that people expect others to share attitudes similar to their own more often than
they actually do (e.g., Ross, Greene, & House, 1977), which would predict givers’ choices would
be heavily weighted based on what they would want to receive themselves, and thus predict no
mismatch, and the work in self-other decision making demonstrating that people often make
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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relatively risky choices for others (e.g., Stone & Allgaier, 2008), which would predict givers
would favor the potential home run in the sentimentally valuable gift. Taken as a whole, the
above discussion suggests our work provides a considerable contribution to consumer
psychology, but we believe perhaps its greatest contribution comes in the number of different
paths it suggests for future research.
First, our work highlights the need for a synthesized framework of the entire gift-giving
endeavor, or said otherwise, a more coherent understanding of the various mismatches between
givers and recipients (Table 1). Our work speaks to this need as some of our results seem to be
somewhat inconsistent with previous work. For instance, research has shown that givers believe
recipients equally-appreciate unrequested and requested gifts, but recipients are more
appreciative of the latter (Gino & Flynn, 2011). This would seem to predict givers would give
sentimentally valuable gifts more often than recipients would prefer (if one assumes preference-
matching gifts are somewhat analogous to requested gifts); however, this is clearly not the case
in our studies. One explanation for this inconsistency may be that recipients simply extract more
utility from sentimentality than from surprise. That said, this incongruity speaks to the need for a
comprehensive framework of the motives and desires of givers and recipients. To that end, a
closer look at Table 1 suggests givers favor gifts that make for a pleasant gift exchange (e.g.,
gifts that are desirable, complete, etc.), whereas recipients prefer gifts that provide the most
utility during their subsequent ownership (e.g., gifts that are requested, feasible, etc.). This notion
may prove to be a good starting point for painting a more coherent picture of the gift-giving
process.
Additionally, our work certainly has some loose-ends future research could explore. For
instance, though our effect persisted no matter the gifting occasion, social closeness of the giver
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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to the recipient, or type of relationship between the two parties, there were some ancillary
findings suggesting these factors may be important. For example, in Study 1, givers were more
likely to give sentimentally valuable gifts to close (vs. more distant) friends. One explanation for
this may be that distant (vs. close) givers are more-strongly motivated to simply give a gift that
will not be disliked, and thus opt for safer, preference-matching gifts. Past work has shown that
gifts affect recipients’ views of relationships (Ruth, Otnes, & Brunel, 1999), and distant givers
may feel they have little room for error, hence leading to such a satisficing strategy. That said,
this is admittedly a post-hoc explanation as this, and the other potential moderators, were
included to test the robustness of our finding, but were not central to our conceptual framework.
Thus, a fruitful avenue for future work may be to gain a greater understanding of the role these,
and other, potential moderators play in the sentimental value vs. preference-matching utility
tradeoff, as well as their roles in gift-giving on a broader level. These factors may too prove to be
a good starting point for generating a synthesized framework of the gift-giving process, as
various moderators have been shown to affect specific gifting decisions (e.g., Ward &
Broniarczyk, 2016; Baskin et al., 2014), but their role in the broader gift-giving process remains
relatively unknown.
Finally, future work could explore other psychological mechanisms that may play a role
in the asymmetry documented in the present work, and examine how the psychological
mechanism of the present work may play a role in other gifting asymmetries. For instance,
regarding the former, sentimentally valuable gifts may be construed by givers and recipients as
quite thoughtful, but the different weights the two parties place on thoughtfulness (Zhang &
Epley, 2012), may lead to a mismatch. Regarding the latter, consider the tradeoff between
immediate, but lesser, gifts, and delayed, but overall superior, gifts (Yang & Urminsky, 2015).
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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Here, givers opt for immediate gifts more than recipients prefer. Perhaps this arises because
givers view immediate gifts as relatively certain to be liked to some minimal degree, but view
delayed gifts as being colored by considerable uncertainty, whereas recipients do not have to
consider such a distribution of utilities; they know for certain the delayed gift is best.
In conclusion, we hope the present work provides insight into the minds of givers and
recipients and sparks several ideas for researchers. Perhaps most importantly, however, we hope
the present research guides givers in their gifting decisions and leads to happier recipients.
SENTIMENTALLY VALUABLE GIFTS
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References
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Footnotes
1Note that this definition of sentimental value differs from that used in economics, which
treats sentimental value as all the non-material financial value of a gift (e.g., List & Shogren,
1998).
2In all studies, sample size was determined prior to the start of data collection and all
variables are reported. All research materials and data can be obtained here: (masked for review,
but available if requested).
3We conducted a pre-test in which givers and recipients imagined taking part in this study
and indicated at what dollar amount they would be indifferent between the gift card and the
sentimentally valuable item. Based on this pre-test, $25 was determined to be an appropriate
amount for the actual study.
4We thank our tremendous Associate Editor, David Wooten, for this eloquent phrasing of
our findings.
