You unwrap a birthday present, admire it and then notice something unusual: the price tag is still attached. Maybe it says $80. Maybe it shows that the handbag was far more expensive than you expected. Suddenly, information that normally disappears before a gift is wrapped becomes part of the exchange. Was the giver careless, or did they want you to see what they spent? Psychology cannot determine someone's motive from a price tag alone. But research on gift-giving asymmetry, signaling, price-quality inference, gratitude and indebtedness reveals something fascinating: givers and recipients often interpret the monetary value of gifts very differently. That mismatch may help explain why someone might think leaving evidence of a gift's price strengthens the gesture, while the recipient may not experience it that way at all.
