The Psychology of Gift Giving
Eid is just around the corner and I have already purchased “no gifts”. There are a lot of choices and products to give as an Eid Gift, so I thought it was time to look for some best practices in gift-giving based on psychological science.
As it turns out psychologists have done a lot of research on what kinds of gifts people appreciate the most. The interesting thing is the kind of gift we think people will like as gift givers turn out not to necessarily be the kind of things that people actually, really, truly appreciate the most as gift recipients.
Tip 1: Ask someone what they want before you buy them a gift
I know it’s revolutionary but let’s look at the evidence. Research shows that people tend to appreciate gifts more when it’s something that they explicitly asked for compare to when it was something that the gift giver came up with him or herself. Here is one of those mismatches where gift givers usually assume that the recipients won’t care one way or another.
So the advice here is pretty obvious to ask people what they want and don’t assume you can come up with something good all by yourself.
Tip 2: If someone ask you what you want as a gift, ask for one thing
Here’s another pro tip that comes from psychologists if you’re the gift recipient in this scenario ask for one thing, don’t give someone a whole list of things that you might want. Because what happens as the studies show is that gift givers get your list that would probably think that you don’t exactly know what you want and they will end up selecting a gift of their choice. But when you put only one thing on your wish list, the gift giver gets the hint and realizes that this must be the thing you really want and everybody’s happy at the end.
There’s another distinction to be made in gift-giving though that is between recipient focused gifts and giver focused gifts.
Recipient focused gifts
Recipient focused gifts are the kind of things that express something about the person who you’re giving the gift to. Something that says I know you, I know what you like, this would be something that’s tailored perfectly to who I think you are.
Giver focused gifts
Giver focused gifts are things that express something about yourself. If I buy you my favorite book for Christmas that would be a giver focus gift. I’m trying to give something of myself to you, to share with you something that I find really interesting.
What type of gifts people prefer and what psychologists say:
When you ask people to predict what kind of gift they’ll prefer a lot of times people say recipient focused gifts. Those fell the most special after all you thought of me, you had to bring me to mind when you were buying a gift for me. So we think we prefer recipient focused gifts but what the evidence seems to show is that giver focused gifts actually strengthen relationships and bring people closer. IT forms a more unique connection. So the advice to you is to think about something about yourself that you can impart to another person. Don’t make it selfish and flashy, make it something that expresses something of you in the gift that you’re giving to another person.
Tip 2: You can feel free to regift stuff
The 3rd piece of advice that comes from psychological research is something that I’m worried about is going to strike too deep a chord and result in angry comments down below the blog post, which is that you can feel free to regift stuff. I know it seems like a bad idea but some of the psychological evidence seems to say that it doesn’t hurt people’s feelings as much as we think it will. This another one of those weird asymmetries between what gift givers feel and what gift receivers feel.
When we receive a gift we couldn’t dare think about passing that along to someone else, it makes us feel really guilty but as gift givers what the evidence seems to show, is if you ask people how hurt would you be if someone regift something that you gave them, people are less bothered by it then we often think they will be.
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I know this whole information can be very overwhelming for you because it was for me too. I asked a few of my friends and family members, that what type of gifts they want and some told me to buy anything you want, some said don’t need to buy anything expensive, because they have to do vice versa, few really gave me their wish list. It was like “I Dug my own grave” because the gifts demand was so diverse, it made me worried that from where I can buy all these gifts?
So to buy gifts for all of them, I went online and found this amazing gift store called ViaMe Store. They have a marvelous collection of gifts for any occasion. I have found some amazing gift ideas and purchased from them and received the gifts the same day. Shout out to their express same day gifts delivery in Dubai with the best prices and second to none customer service. I recommend visiting their store and explore their collection, and hopefully buy some memorable gifts for your loved ones.
Hopefully you enjoyed reading this blog post. I would highly appreciate your thoughts on it. Please feel free to like and share this post.
Also recommend: The Science behind Gifts Giving another great post.