Character of Giver More Important Than What's Got
I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise, but character traits mean more to us than material benefits when we're thinking about how much we like someone. When it comes to making decisions involving others, the impression we have of their character weighs more heavily than do our assessments of how they can benefit us, a team of New York University researchers has found. “When we learn and make decisions about people, we don’t simply look at the positive or negative outcomes they bring to us—such as whether they gave us a loan or helped us move,” explains Leor Hackel, a doctoral candidate in NYU’s Department of Psychology and the study’s lead author. “Instead, we often look beyond concrete outcomes to form trait impressions, such as how generous a person seems to be, and these impressions carry more weight in our future social decisions." Admit it. Don't you look deeper into how a person treats you than the $2 they may have given you when you came up sh...