The Smile-Seeking Hypothesis: How Immediate Affective Reactions Motivate and Reward Gift Giving

People making decisions for others often do not choose what their recipients most want. Prior research has generally explained such preference mismatches as decision makers mispredicting recipients’ satisfaction. We proposed that a “smile-seeking” motive is a distinct cause for these mismatches in the context of gift giving. After examining common gift options for which gift givers expect a difference between the recipients’ affective reaction (e.g., a smile when receiving the gift) and overall satisfaction, we found that givers often chose to forgo satisfaction-maximizing gifts and instead favor reaction-maximizing gifts. This reaction-maximizing preference was mitigated when givers anticipated not giving the gift in person. Results from six studies suggest that anticipated affective reactions powerfully shape gift givers’ choices and giving experiences, independently of (and even in spite of) anticipated recipient satisfaction. These findings reveal a dominant yet overlooked role that the display of affective reactions plays in motivating and rewarding gift-giving behaviors and shed new light on interpersonal decision making.