by Kristen Senz
With the rise of mobile payment apps like Venmo, many people can easily record the exact charges incurred by a lunch partner and pay back debts to the cent. They see themselves as efficient and fair.
Others often have a different word for their behavior: petty.
Pettiness, or “intentional attentiveness to trivial details,” as defined in a recent research study, can drag down relationships, result in recriminating behavior, and ruin the good intentions behind very generous donations.
On the flip side, leaving room for error in exchanges of money and time–by rounding off amounts or ignoring the clock, for example–can signal trust and a desire to develop a lasting connection.
“We suggest that deliberating over trivial matters when deciding how much to expend can signal a partner’s intention to give precisely no more and no less than is necessary, making that relationship feel transactional in nature,” observe the authors of Pettiness in Social Exchange, a paper published last year in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
The coauthors, Tami Kim, assistant professor at the University of Virginia; Ting Zhang, assistant professor at Harvard Business School; and Michael I. Norton, HBS research director and Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration, conducted a series of seven studies involving more than 2,000 participants. The experiments sought to isolate the effects of pettiness and increase understanding of the distinct role pettiness plays in exchange dynamics, especially as apps like Venmo and Cash App make it easier than ever to exchange exact amounts.
“Venmo clearly allows everyone to accurately exchange money very efficiently—it doesn’t take more time to type in a precise amount,” Kim says. “But that kind of precision can be very off-putting, and we wanted to find out why.”
The study results consistently showed that when people view their partner as engaging in petty behavior, they are less satisfied with the relationship, like the person less, and are more likely to punish the person socially, such as by assigning them boring tasks. These results held across age groups and cultures. (One study compared the perceptions of American participants with those of participants from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.)
“Critically,” the authors write, “we demonstrated that pettiness as a construct is distinct from generosity and stinginess: Even when people gave objectively larger or smaller amounts of money or time, doing so in a petty manner exerted an independent negative effect on relationships.”
In other words, the cold, impersonal feeling that comes with receiving $2.56 for a cup of coffee or 26 minutes to catch up with a friend carries more weight, in terms of relationship harm, than being shortchanged or only given 20 minutes. “Between someone who gives $5.99 and someone who gives $5, the person who gives $5.99 might be penalized more, even if that amount is objectively more than $5,” Zhang says.
In cases in which a seemingly petty amount is exchanged, but the giver does not intend to focus on precision, an explanation of the true motivation helps mitigate the negative effects, the researchers find.
“If all we had in our wallet was $13.50 and we give that amount to someone else, in our minds, we think we’re being generous because we’re giving everything that we have,” Zhang says, “but the other person on the receiving end is not thinking that. They don’t have insight into the counterfactual, so oftentimes even when we think we’re being generous, we may not be conveying that.”
Pettiness in the workplace
Whether people perceive certain actions as petty depends primarily on the expectations of the parties in a given situation. “When we’re doing a business deal with our counterpart on the other end, we’re expecting that person to be really exacting and precise,” Zhang says. “There’s some research by colleagues at Columbia showing that giving precise offers, in contract negotiations for instance, can lead to beneficial monetary outcomes for the offer maker.”
However, in the context of relationships that have the potential to cross the business boundary and become personal, the study suggests that leaving room for error in resource exchanges can have a positive effect. If there’s “even an ounce” of perception by the other party that the relationship could or should extend beyond the business context to the friendship level, then precise transactions can hurt the relationship, Kim says.
“When you’re not being precise and you’re not being petty, you’re signaling you’re OK with leaving room for error, and that in turn can signal elements of trust and that you want there to be future exchanges,” Kim says.
For a better understanding of how pettiness affects workplace and business relationships, more research is needed, Zhang says. In the meantime, letting a few cents go here and there, and explaining our intentions to avoid being perceived as petty, could be valuable investments in the future of our social relationships.
“Although technology has made it easier now to be precise and exacting in our relationships, it’s important to remember that in fact there’s a lot to be gained by moving in the opposite direction, which is keeping less track of things, especially interpersonally,” Zhang says. “We benefit when we treat our friends in a communal way, rather than keeping track of everything and making sure that we’re even with one another.”
