The Thought Does Count (really!)

Dozes of times a year -- and several times on this site in various places by now -- I utter the words "everything is researched," usually during a conversation with someone when we're wondering about something and have no answers. Then I stop spending time thinking about it because the answer likely exists in published research, because (wait for it:) everything is researched.

Such is the case for gift giving.

I'm writing this entry a few days before Thanksgiving, the holiday that serves as a speed bump between sometime in October and the race to the December holidays. The festive December season has definitely gobbled up Thanksgiving (pun very much intended) and is encroaching on Halloween. Pretty soon I may be handing out candy canes on October 31.

Also during this time of year we see commercials of an unsuspecting person open the front door of their house and excitedly react to the sight of a new car with a gigantic bow on the roof, to the delight of their partner. There's a similar commercial where both people unknowingly bought the same car for each other, which they realize simultaneously when they appear from the house together. Now from a practical standpoint, that's inexplicable; one new car with a bow had to be sitting there when the second one showed up, so one of those two people knew ahead of time and was faking their surprise.

Saturday Night Live spoofed this commercial by the wife reacting with a "WTF were you thinking?" reaction because they couldn't afford a new car. She tries to restrain her reaction in front of their teenage son, but eventually cracks and her son learns of his dad's chronic financial mismanagement, all in the driveway on Christmas morning. Classic SNL.

photo: www.vulture.com

The science of gift-giving is unsurprisingly niche, and Julian Givi, PhD at West Virginia University shows up in a lot of the published research on this topic from the past ~5 years. He has 20 publications alone since 2020 on the topic, and in the world of published research, that is an impressive pace. A caveat on my synthesis below; this research is based on studies with adults.

When reviewing Dr. Givi and others' research, a lot of it centers on giver-receiver "asymmetry," they call it. Givers and receivers are not on the same page much of the time about what constitutes a good gift, and as I see it, the giver seems to bear more of the responsibility for the imbalance. In some older research from the late 1990s, the authors outlined six effects gifts can have on relationships, and the worst two effects are "weakening" and "severing." Severing! Imagine a gift SO BAD that it ends the relationship. Those stories must have some juicy back story.

Among the imbalances between giver and receiver that show up consistently in research:

Givers tend to assess and select gifts based in large part on anticipating the receiver's emotions upon opening it: delight, excitement, surprise, etc, or what is called the exchange quality. Receivers, on the other hand, tend to assess gifts based on their usefulness, or the utility quality. The implication: givers need to focus on what the recipient will use. Recipients need to practice emotional intelligence and give a solid and favorable reaction when opening the giver's gift.
Receivers tend to value gifts more favorably when the gift's benefits are prolonged; the immediacy of the gift's usage typically isn't important. For prolonged benefits, think "wine of the month" or clothing that will last a long time by its style or durability, a gift they will still be useful months or years after the exchange.

For immediacy (or lack of it, to be clear), this is another big wedge that explains giver/receiver asymmetry. Remember, when selecting a gift, givers are thinking about the moment the gift is opened, and think a gift with immediate utility will elicit a more favorable reaction. While it may be true about that a receiver's reaction might be more excited if the gift can be used immediately ("I can use these snowshoes this weekend"), they don't assess the quality of the gift overall with its immediate usefulness in mind. It's okay to give a paddleboard in the middle of winter or a sweater to someone with a summer birthday. There is no "seasonal appropriateness" (my term) in most recipients' assessments of gift quality. But, givers tend to follow what they believe are entrenched gift-giving norms, including a norm that recipients prefer gifts they can use now. It's simply not true.
Receivers prefer quality, and quality is defined by receivers in large part by utility (see above). There are some fun (funny?) experiments here. Givers often associate "quality" with "new," but that is not shared by recipients. For example in one study, recipients preferred a second-hand dictionary with 100,000 words over a new dictionary with 50,000 words. To be honest, both are lousy gifts because, well, they are dictionaries. On the upside though, along the journey of preparing this post I learned most English dictionaries contain a whopping ~170,000 words, and more than 47,000 words have been buried, dropped from dictionaries as they became obsolete by someone's determination. R.I.P. to exipotic, an unfortunate decision to declare it dead in 1884 because it is a colorful word that has a clear place in society to describe a very unsavory occurrence in a very benign-sounding way: "cleansing the body of illness. While the medicine was exipotic to his body, it made a mess of his bathroom."

If a giver cannot afford a higher quality option, recipients would prefer steps toward higher quality over a lower quality alternative. In a study about -- again, EVERYTHING is studied -- receivers' satisfaction with the gift of a blender, receivers preferred $50 toward a high quality $100 blender, rather than a cheaper quality $50 blender paid in full. This reminded me of the retail days of putting something on "layaway," a now-defunct practice of paying in random installments, and the store kept the item under your name somewhere in "the back" -- all stores have a mysterious place known as "the back" -- until it was paid off. I paid for an acid wash jeans jacket like the one in the photo below via layaway around 1987, a jacket I incorrectly assumed would have big effects on my social stature. I visited the store where my jacket lived, located in the same mall where I worked as a busboy, and would plop down most of my tip money from that day to make a payment. Sometimes I asked to see the jacket, to remind myself of how awesome life was going to be once I owned it. Layaway was sort of a reverse hospice situation for retail. You make a visit now and then, but unlike hospice, in the end you get to take the item home.

Photo: ebay.com

Much of what's behind givers' beliefs about receivers' preferences are a result of their perceived social norms, many of which are flawed or outright wrong. Flowers on Valentines Day. Second hand gifts are tacky. Give physical things that can be opened, not experiences. Guess what Dr. Givi's research has shown about receivers' gift assessment? Indifference to flowers. Acceptance of second hand if it means higher utility. Experiences over material things. Gift givers, it's time you questioned everything. Burn down your gift-giving belief system and rebuild.
The final point I'll highlight from research links to a funny finding consistent with social science conclusions in other contexts, where we hold a belief about ourselves that is admirable or platitudinal, but we think others generally don't hold the same belief. Sort of an unfortunate "I might be better than thou" juxtaposition in our heads. In this version, we give ourselves credit as both gift givers and receivers for making room for an "it's the thought that counts" principle when assessing gift quality. We think WE integrate that thought when making a gift quality assessment, but we don't think others do the same. We think others focus on the gift's value, so much so that givers will upgrade or add to their gifts if they learn about others' gift plans to the same person. Such inner turmoil we unnecessarily place on ourselves. Turns out receivers are just as likely to consider thoughtfulness, and in fact, generally assess gift quality independent of any other gifts received at the same time.

Reading about the science of gift giving is, admittedly, a little much for me, meaning I wonder if this is something we really need to get to the bottom of, and can we just let some aspects of life go less understood, or at least less scientifically understood. Maybe my indifference is the lack of its relevance to me personally. My family -- parents, siblings, and once nieces and nephews became adult-aged -- stopped giving gifts several years ago at the holidays, opting instead for one unisex white elephant gift under $50 for what has become a raucous and fun Christmas Eve tradition. Some of us treat it with the purity of a traditional funny white elephant gift and some give very legit gifts, and that's what's fun: you might end up with a penguin onesie or you might end up with a $50 gift card. The experience has nothing to do with gift quality, and more to do with unpredictability, laughter, irony and togetherness.

For gift givers:

relax a bit and trust that gift receivers will appreciate your thoughtfulness, first and foremost
consider what will be useful to the receiver as a gift, and ideally, find a gift that will be useful AND potentially elicit an excited reaction
ask yourself if you're making assumptions about what comprises a good gift; many of the norms we think are true about gift-giving actually aren't true. We just tell ourselves they are.
keep quality in mind when selecting a gift, with quality defined by the (prolonged) usefulness to the receiver

For gift receivers:

drop hints or be explicit about what would be useful for you
express gratitude for the thought and generosity of the gift giver, no matter the gift
the gift giver is often thinking about your potential reaction when opening a gift. Express your surprise, gratitude, and appreciation. Emotional intelligence tells us how to read the room and act accordingly with what people need from us. Act accordingly.

Top image generated via Canva Magic Media. Idea for the content of this post came from No Stupid Questions podcast.