Gift giving: We're doing it wrong

Brut America

First, let's stop giving cool gifts.   There's a way to make sure our loved ones truly enjoy our presents ... Psychologist Nathan Novemsky breaks it down for us.

Transcript

00:00There's some real disconnect between what people give and what people want.

00:05There's some basic psychology that, you know, when we think about the gift receiver and the

00:09gift giver, they're looking at the gift from two different perspectives.

00:12The gift giver is often focused a little too much on the attractiveness or the, you know,

00:31the coolness, the kind of appeal of the gift, what we sometimes call the desirability.

00:36Whereas the gift receiver, while they care about that stuff too, they also care quite a bit about

00:41the feasibility of the gift, how easy, convenient is it to use. For example, you know, give a really

00:46cool blender with lots of different features and so it's kind of higher in desirability, not so

00:49high on feasibility. And you think your friend is going to be excited or wowed by all the different

00:54features and think, wow, what a thoughtful gift. But what you forget is, well, when they get the

00:58gift, they have to figure out how to actually use all those features. And so it may be kind

01:02of difficult or a pain for them to do that. Imagine you're using the gift. If you just do

01:07that, and it sounds very simple, but it's something we often don't do by ourselves,

01:10you'll end up giving a gift that makes your friend or your family member

01:13much happier than they would be if you just relied on your intuitions alone.

01:21Yeah, gift wrapping actually has a kind of ironic effect, which is we try to wrap gifts and wrap

01:27them beautifully to make people more excited and happier with the gift. What we found in our

01:31research was what this does is it actually raises their expectations. And by raising expectations,

01:36it actually makes them a little less happy, even a little disappointed sometimes

01:40with the gift that's inside. And what we found consistently in study after study was

01:44if you don't wrap a gift or even if you wrap a gift poorly or unattractively,

01:48you actually get people happier to be happier with the gift that they have

01:52than if you wrap it attractively.

01:59In times of financial stress, that's many of us are experiencing during the pandemic,

02:04often people still dig down a little bit more to give gifts. So instead of trying to just help

02:10people forget the pandemic, which also has some value, maybe lean into a little bit and say,

02:15what would make their life easier? And start to ask, what are the kinds of things that make

02:19working from home, being at home a little more fun, a little less stressful, a little more

02:23pleasant? Those are good kind of perspectives to take rather than what's the funniest

02:27or the cutest or the coolest gift I could give.

02:34When you think about the kind of inside joke or, you know, a wink and a nod,

02:38kind of, I know something about you that many, maybe other people don't know.

02:41It's fine to think about that. What we find in the research is that that's not received

02:46quite as well as you'd like. You want to give them something you're going to actually want to

02:48use and use often. So each time they take it out of the, you know, out of the closet

02:52or out of the drawer that they'll think about you.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended