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Admit it.  You love your husband but that iron he gave you for your birthday. . .not so much. What happens when good people get bad gifts ? According to newswise.com, sometimes a little malice might be involved.   It reports that receiving is complicated when gifts are not meant to please. A typical U.S. consumer is expected to buy 14 gifts this holiday season, and new marketing research describes how and why many of these gifts will cause dissatisfaction rather than joy. In new research findings, NYIT School of Management associate professor Deborah Y. Cohn asserts that people who give bad gifts often do so intentionally. Prior gift-giving research has assumed that bad gifts result from mistakes, but Cohn’s study, using in-depth interviews as well as data available via online message boards, describes five categories of intentional bad gift-giving: gifts that threaten the recipient’s self-concept, such as: -- giving a pregnancy test to your childless daught...

We all know the story of the woman expecting a diamond necklace who gets the Swiffer for Christmas. Or the woodworker, the mani-pedi. What do you do when you get a gift you really . . .don't want? Oh, I've been there. Granted, my husband is Jewish and Christmas has come hard to him. But what do you do when you don't get what you want, from somebody you love but who should know better? Experts conducting an experiment found that women who got an undesirable gift shrugged it off, while men who got a bad one weren't quite so easy-going. They say it's easier for women to wreck a new relationship with a bad gift. As if. Larry hasn't always been a, well, great gift-giver. When we first started dating I got a diamond heart one Christmas, a solid gold bracelet another and even one-carat diamond earrings the Christmas I was pregnant with our son ( my idea). What is the effect of bad gifts given within established relationships? A...