If you struck out on gift-giving this year, pleasing no one and getting nothing you liked, maybe next year just hand over cash. Or maybe not.
In a recent article, economist and free market happy warrior Arthur Brooks said that the word from economists is that “gifts we buy others are worth up to a third less to them than what they would buy for themselves if we just gave them the money instead.” So, really the value of our gift-giving is less than the value of our dollars.
But that sounds a little grinchy so Brooks looked into whether the old saying that “it’s the thought that counts” really means something. Apparently, he found, social science says the adage only goes so far in a relationship. One study showed that individuals are more likely to perseverate on the meaning and intent behind a bad gift than the meaning and intent behind a good one. Not much good can come from blowing it when giving a gift to a loved one, but hopefully the relationship is strong enough to survive.
On the bright side, Brooks writes that the research shows that giving the perfect gift isn’t all that important for people in new relationships.
In a 2008 study in the journal Social Cognition, four psychologists conducted an experiment in which young men and women who had just met gave one another gift certificates. Unbeknown to the participants, the researchers manipulated the gifts, giving half of the recipients popular certificates, and the other half embarrassing ones.
Let’s consider this from the point of view of a participant. You sign up for an experiment to help out a professor, because you’re a good person. You meet an attractive person in the experiment, and give him or her a certificate to a nice bookstore. Maybe he or she will go out with you later, right? It turns out the researcher switches your gift for a certificate for something like acne cream. Perhaps someone should do a study about why psychologists don’t want you to be happy.
So what happened in the experiment when the participants got a bad gift? The answer depended on gender. Women who got an undesirable certificate shrugged it off, while men who got bad certificates judged themselves to be very dissimilar from the women who gave them. In other words, it’s easier for women to wreck a new relationship with a bad gift.
Fortunately, in perhaps the most unsurprising finding of the decade, scholars in the science journal PLOS One published an article in 2013 with the self-explanatory title “Women Are Better at Selecting Gifts Than Men.” Somebody actually might have gotten tenure figuring that one out.
Meantime, psychologists counter that people are happier when they focus on the meaning of the holidays rather than the mercantile rituals associated with them, leading Brooks to reveal some simple truths.
Try to give people what they value, but if you mess up, it isn’t a big deal to the people who truly love you. Above all, give of yourself, and share your faith and affection abundantly.
So, did you get the gift you wanted this holiday? And if not, are you mad at someone for the gift you did get or for the one you didn’t get? If you are upset, you may want to reevaluate your relationship. You may also have missed the reason for the season.
