There’s a lot to be said for giving gifts. They enable givers to demonstrate their generosity, sensitivity and creativity. Givers receive emotional benefits from gifting, such as feelings of closeness with recipients, and the pleasure of shopping for an important relationship partner.
But giving gifts apparently also does something else for givers: It makes them feel entitled to behave badly in the future.
That’s because of a human tendency to balance good behaviors with bad ones. Research, for instance, has documented that virtuous behaviors, such as voting, helping someone or donating to charity will green-light self-indulgent or unethical behaviors. In one study, people were more likely to cheat and steal after buying environmentally friendly products than they were after buying conventional ones.
What’s cheating?
My colleagues and I recently investigated whether…
