I think the psychological effect is probably real, but the framing is telling.
The OP at least admints that it's sort of an asshole move to exploit this, while LessWrong straight up recommends people to do this - and in fact goes a step further and insists it's a virtuous thing to do if you value your friendships:
If you have a fixed amount of money to spend—and your goal is to display your friendship, rather than to actually help the recipient—you’ll be better off deliberately not shopping for value. Decide how much money you want to spend on impressing the recipient, then find the most worthless object which costs that amount. The cheaper the class of objects, the more expensive a particular object will appear, given that you spend a fixed amount. Which is more memorable, a $25 shirt or a $25 candle? [1]
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I think the psychological effect is probably real, but the framing is telling.
The OP at least admints that it's sort of an asshole move to exploit this, while LessWrong straight up recommends people to do this - and in fact goes a step further and insists it's a virtuous thing to do if you value your friendships:
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3T6p93Mut7G8qdkAs/evaluabili... (The rest of the article is actually still worth a read because it has a lot more explanation and nuance on the psychology behind it)