The situation is more complicated, Mandel found. Specifically, in his experiments, most sellers of a music CD bent over backwards to offer a generous price to their friends. In fact, the sellers’ asking prices were significantly lower than what their friends were willing to offer. Thus, these sellers assumed the curious stance of wanting to talk buyers down in price. (This finding is a reversal of the classic endowment effect, in which the owner of an object tends to value it more highly than others do.) Curiously, in Mandel’s studies, generosity toward friends proved to be something of a one-way street: when negotiating to buy from friends, participants were not motivated to overpay.