Laurence Ashworth

Who they are

The work of Laurence Ashworth reaches this site through the papers listed below. On this site the name is tied to Experiential Gift Appreciation.

Key papers

Mutluoglu, A., Ashworth, L., & Robitaille, N. (2024). Looking a gift horse in the mouth: Suspicion of large gift expenditures undermines gift appreciation. Psychology & Marketing, 41(6), 1333-1345. What it reports: Four studies. Large visible gift expenditures made recipients suspicious of the giver's motives and undermined appreciation; experiential gifts, which take time and effort, drew less suspicion and were appreciated more. Prior research had found recipients indifferent to how much givers spent.

Van Boven, L., & Ashworth, L. (2007). Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(2), 289-300. What it reports: Five experiments: people reported more intense emotion anticipating an emotional event than recalling it, for positive, negative, routine and hypothetical events including Thanksgiving Day; the tendency was linked to mental simulation of the event.

Key ideas

Experiential Gift Appreciation: The finding that gifts involving time and effort draw less suspicion about the giver's motives and are appreciated more than large visible expenditures.

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