Why is it that we feel more special and valued by the sender when receiving an actual card from them on your birthday then if they would just post a message on our facebook wall? In essence, it literally says the same; I wish you a happy birthday. Receiving hard copied mail, and I am not talking about bills or advertisement but a real letter, still makes people feel more special and valued then receiving a text. Even though mail is a very outdated way of sending a message. Objectively reasoning would say that receiving a message through the highest technology possible would be seen as the most attractive. Though this is not true when it comes to messages. So what is it that mail is more special to us then a text or an email? Because you can touch it.
But what does the fact that the message itself is tangible makes it more special? Some say that it’s because sending a tangible message takes more effort, and they are almost right. But it’s not just effort that makes the message valuable. Have you ever thought, after receiving a get-well card from your grandmother; “ aww that’s so sweet, she actually went to the store and paid money for this card and then went all the way back home, wrote it and went all the way to the mailbox to send it to me’. No. The usual reaction on a card like that would be; “ aww that’s so cute, she is thinking about me’ . And the reason why you would think that is because sending a tangible message takes way more mental effort then an intangible message does.
In 2004, associates completed a study called ‘Stating Preference for the Ethereal but Choosing the Concrete: How the Tangibility of Attributes Affects Attribute Weighting in Value Elicitation and Choice. One of the
outcomes of the experiment was that people put a higher value on tangible objects then they do on intangible object. In our new way of communicating the actual message does not have his own tangible form anymore. Of course we have our phones and laptops which receive our messages, though the message itself does not have a tangible form anymore. If we apply the outcome of the experiment on this fact, we can state that because our messages are not tangible anymore, we do not value them as much as tangible messages. This explains the reason why we like to receive hardcopy mail, but also the other way around. The messages that we send are also intangible, so we value them less as well.
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