Errors in Gift Giving

In this special holiday episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the science of bad christmas gift giving – and receiving.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
It is the holidays, and I imagine a lot of
you out there are in the midst of your gift
acquisition phase. You are, maybe you're towards the end of it.
Maybe you think you have everything lined up. Today's episode
is to help you second guess all of those choices
and make you wonder, Hey, am I really that good
of a gift giver after all?

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah, we were talking before we came on about ways
to make this not just end up leaving everyone feeling
guilty and anxious about the gifts that already gotten for people.
I want to emphasize that gift giving, while there are
a lot of ways for it to go wrong, it's
mostly very low stakes. We've all given less than ideals,

(01:00):
We've always we've all received less than ideal gifts. So
while I think there's a lot to learn from looking
at the ways gift giving can go wrong, it's also
not something to stress out about too much. You know,
as the saying goes, it's the thought that counts at
least in some ways.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, I always told myself that is the thought that counts.
I have some questions about that logic. We may get into.
But because you do, you get into some of the
papers that have been written about gift giving, and you
do get the sense that no gift giving is a
battlefield as well. It is a contest of wills, and
the stakes could not be any higher. What is on

(01:38):
the line is like the definition of a relationship. What
if the gift that I give is not equal to
that which I receive in one way or another, you know,
in price, appropriateness, thoughtfulness, practicality, there's so many different qualifiers
that you can employ here. Yeah, every holiday sea And

(02:00):
I'm reminded of the line from TV's thirty Rock where
Jack Donaghy's assistant Jonathan tells Les Lemon he's the best
gift giver in the world. I tried once. I bought
him a ninety five dollars bottle of olive oil. In return,
he got my sister out of in North Korean jail.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
That's about right.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, that sums up the stress that you can feel
going especially going into a first time gift exchange. You know,
once you've done a few holidays in a row, you
probably know the deal and it's a lot more late back.
But yeah, it can feel like this.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Now, I want to stress that there are a lot
of studies about gift giving, and much has been said
about the practice throughout human history, and one way or another, Aristotle, Confucius,
many others have reflected on the act of giving. Though
you'll quickly find that not every nugget of human wisdom
concerning gifts and giving is easily applied to ritualized holiday

(02:50):
gift giving, especially in our modern age.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Mm. Yeah, that's right. One of the papers I was
looking at, though, made an interesting claim, which is that
they said that gift giving is culturally universal. I really
briefly went looking to see if I could find a
counter example of like a culture that does not exchange gifts,
and you know, I didn't do a dissertation or anything,
but I could not find an example. It does seem

(03:14):
that basically everyone everywhere exchanges gifts in some form.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, I mean, basically it's not even unique to human beings.
This is not really the podcast episode where we're going
to go into animals giving gifts, but there are numerous
examples we could turn to and have discussed in the
show before. Yeah, distinct from human gift giving, but still
there is this, there is the spirit of it there,
the holiday spirit is present amid the spiders and the

(03:38):
dogs and so forth. M Yeah, Now, I want to
stress that we're largely going to be considering the idea
of gifts given in good faith here sow not just
straight no straight up nasty gifts, gifts of sabotage and
so forth, but gifts that are given in more or
less the correct spirit of gift giving.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
This is what most of the studies on gift giving
look into, especially the ones that get into the errors
in gift giving. There are some distinctions these studies make
between genuinely altruistic motivations for gift giving and then self
or ego focused motivations for gift giving. But I think
even the gifts that have some kind of selfish motivation

(04:25):
behind them, you could still say are mostly given in
good faith. You're still trying to give a nice gift
even when there's something for you in the exchange. But
this would be ruling out the kinds of gifts that
are like purely malicious or pranks or something I remember.
I used to think about how funny it would be
to show up to Christmas and give the uncle like

(04:46):
a large illegal reptile. They did not ask for unwanted pets.
That's like the classic malicious gift.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, I mean, it's also, as we'll get into, it's
also a classic example of what the giver may think
of as a great gift, but they're just not thinking
about the practicality of the thing.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
So obviously, this still leads plenty of room for disconnect
between two gift exchangers, between the giver and the receiver
intentions on one side, reception on the other, with both
sides going into the scenario with separate and potentially unaligned
predictions of how the gift will be received based on
simulated simulations formulated via our theory of mind. Because, as

(05:28):
we've covered on the show before, every relationship in our
life is predicated on a simulation in our own mind
of what the other's mind state consists of, and it
might be reasonably accurate. You know that our model reasonably
approximates the other person's mindset, at least insofar as we
interact with it. It might be effective for this given relationship,

(05:50):
but it could also be inaccurate in key ways and
could be detrimental to the relationship in the shorter long
term well.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
And in fact, I would say a lot of times
when gift giving fails, it may come down to the
recipient of the gift detecting that the gift givers mental
model of them is not accurate. That makes sense, like
you know, when a gift is given that the recipient

(06:18):
thinks you should have known that this is not what
I would have wanted. What they're upset about is not
just the gift. They're upset about being misunderstood or being
modeled incorrectly.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yes, yes, I would agree, and we'll get into some
more nuanced examples of this as we proceed. Now. I
do want to point out that some of the sources
I was looking at painted of what sounded like maybe
an academically pretty bleak picture of gift giving. There was
a nineteen ninety three paper I looked at titled The

(06:51):
Dark Side of the Gift, published in the Journal of
Business Research by and was authored by Sherry McGrath and Levy,
and it really floored me with a few of these statements.
So I want to read a couple of these quotes,
and I do apologize that by not actually going into
their study, these are kind of out of context. So
give the authors in the original paper the benefit of

(07:13):
a doubt here, But I shall read gift giving and
receiving in gender high levels of anxiety among consumers. Gifts
create and exacerbate interpersonal conflict. They were frequently used as weapons,
and consumers' responses to them are carefully canalyzed.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Now, I was not able to understand what canalyzed means
in this context. I almost wondered if it was a
typo by the authors. But canalyzed or canalyzed that is
a word I definitely agree with the first two sentences there. Obviously,
it's a huge amount of anxiety about gift giving. I
feel it myself. I love to give a good gift,
That's one of my favorite things to do. But it

(07:53):
so rarely happens that I am able to figure out
what that perfect gift is for somebody that I don't know.
More often, I'm just like really worried and anxious that
the gifts I'm getting people are not good enough or
not really what they want.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well, yeah, I mean there's a whole discussion that we
had there about the idea of a perfect gift, right, Yeah,
perfect is always the enemy of done, and you do
want to get done. You want to be finished with
your holiday shopping at some point, so we probably shouldn't
put that much pressure on ourselves.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yeah. Yeah, at the same time that I'm trying to
put your fears at rest. You know, there's a hypocrisy here,
because I still feel the clinch too, Like, oh no,
is this am I getting the wrong thing? Is this
actually going to offend somebody?

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Well, going back to the dark side of the gift
for just a second, what could be possibly formed into
a canal here? I think maybe they're referring to like
the channeling of the resulting negativity, because their argument here,
if I'm understanding correctly, and I could be getting it
completely wrong, is that the conflict that is exacerbated by

(08:56):
the gift giving results in negativity that then has to
be man aged by both the giver and the recipient.
But quote consumers, victims of sentiment and symbolism are found
to be entrapped in rituals and enjoyed by cultural ideology
from expressing discontent in most ways except fantasy. So It
really brings the mind to Brian this idea that gift

(09:19):
giving just causes like this deep dark growth in the
soul that we just have to like swallow down into
the depths of our beings where it just stagnates and corrupts. Again,
I'm probably blowing it out of proportion here.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Oh, I mean the hit. There is a whole other
question of sometimes when like economists write about gift giving,
there is a negativity in the way they talk about
it too, because because there are there is a traditional
view in economics that in a lot of ways gift giving,
especially giving of non cash gifts, like in kind gifts,

(09:56):
that that results in economic inefficiency and way. So the
idea is, you know, you give somebody something you bought
for them that you know that they didn't buy themselves.
That creates waste because people end up getting a lot
of gifts that they do not want, or maybe it's
a gift that they kind of want, but it's not

(10:16):
exactly what they would have selected for themselves if they
were going to spend the same amount of money. But
fortunately I was reading about this and economists have sort
of come back on this a bit. They don't even
think that gift giving is purely wasteful or inefficient in
economic terms. Clearly, there's a lot of social benefits social
value added from gift giving, so that's not really in question.

(10:40):
But in terms of just purely economic benefits, there are
some views that the gift giving can actually increase that too.
For example, if a material good acquires value to someone
by virtue of being a gift, so it is now
worth more to the recipient than the giver paid for it.
And then there are also these interesting studies that find

(11:03):
that sometimes gift giving may increase economic value by doing
what they call reducing search costs, essentially by providing people
with access to goods they find desirable that they would
not have known about or would not have been able
to acquire efficiently for themselves. And I was trying to
think about real life examples of this one that you

(11:25):
used to figure into my life all the time when
I was traveling a lot for Christmas, would be people
would give each other gifts of like local specialties from
their hometowns when they get together for Christmas. So there
you may actually be adding economic value because it would
be economically costly and difficult for somebody to go acquire
that local thing themselves.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
But that being said, there still is a lot of
economic literature that emphasizes the downsides, the downsides of gift
giving in terms of inefficiency and waste in the economy.
In fact, one of the papers I was looking at
so it started by citing an estimate that consumers in
the United States, just in the United States, spend hundreds

(12:11):
of billions of dollars on interpersonal gifts each year, and
it flagged an article about holiday gift returns. Now, this
is an older article, so the numbers might be even
more staggering by now. This is from December twenty fifteen,
published in CNBC by Tom de Christopher. The article is
called your Holiday returns cost retailers billions, and it says

(12:35):
that an estimated seventy billion dollars worth of products were
expected to be returned to sellers around the twenty fifteen
holiday season, according to a logistics and solutions firm called Optro,
and it talked about how retailers can recoup some of
those costs. They can put items up for resale. Sometimes,

(12:58):
depending on what they are, they can for them at
a deep discount to liquidators. But a lot of that
value is just gone. It's lost, and the article says
that in the previous year, Americans returned a total of
about two hundred and eighty four billion dollars worth of merchandise.
Somewhere between a quarter to half of that value is

(13:18):
just lost and cannot be recouped by the seller. Another
estimate given in the article was that overall, sellers expect
about ten percent of goods to be returned. This obviously
varies by product sector and the channel of sale. I've
read some stuff saying that the numbers are probably higher
now than they were ten years ago, and especially for

(13:39):
online sales, or there are a lot of returns, but
either way, beyond the yearly average, there is a surge
in returns at the end of the year around Christmas time.
According to Optro, about a quarter of all returns for
the year occur around Christmas. And you can guess that
a bunch of this comes from unwanted gifts. People getting

(13:59):
a gain. If they don't want they take it back
to the store with a gift receipt and get it exchanged. Now,
on one hand, it might be hard to get too
broken up about, you know, lost profits for retailers. I
don't know, do I care if Walmart is losing some
losing some profit this year, But obviously a lot of
that economic loss is going to get taken out on
regular people, on low level employees, and on consumers, like sorry,

(14:22):
prices have to go up, no raise this year, et cetera,
because we lost profits. But apart from the economic losses,
it also creates a huge amount of material waste each year.
So like a returned like new high value object like
an iPad or something can often be resold for a
significant fraction of its original value. But a lot of

(14:43):
products that are returned are not worth the cost of
putting them through the reverse supply chain, so they just
go in the trash. And it's kind of sad to
think about.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Oh wow, So it really seems like, on one hand,
we have an economic responsibility to be better gift givers
so that you are not certainly so they don't go
into trash, but also so they don't they're not just
returned and you know, and they go through this life
cycle that you've just described. But on the other hand,
there it does seem like there are certain types of
gifts that would not be purchased if gift givers were

(15:15):
more thoughtful and intelligent about what they're doing, like and
and and I say that in you know, half serious.
I guess on that, especially with kids, there's a lot
of plastic garbage that goes out, and that plastic garbage
can be pretty joyous in the short term. So I'm
not saying it's like a complete loss, but at the

(15:36):
end of at the end of the day, sometimes literally
the end of Christmas Day, but it certainly at the
end the end of the end of the day, it
just becomes garbage.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
It's just loss. I mean, I think I had more
of the plastic garbage view before I became a parent,
And now my daughter gets so much enjoyment out of
playing with little pieces of plastic garbage, like she's in
love with somebody of the you know, like a little
plastic animal or something. So I don't know, it's hard
for me to demonize those things too much.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, I mean, you never know when one will be like,
I have plastic garbage right here on my desk. This
I'm gonna hold this up for you so you can
see in the camera. Jo, I have no idea where
this came from. Maybe it's a happy meal toy. I'm
not sure it's a mummy. It is the very definition
of plastic garbage. I'm not sure where it came from,
but for some reason it's treasured, so you never can tell.

(16:29):
All right, Well, let's get a bit into the central
topic here, errors in gift giving. How things go wrong
and where they go wrong. So one of the really
the first paper to catch my eye on this topic
because we're looking at other holiday possibilities. It was a
twenty sixteen paper titled why certain gifts are great to

(16:49):
give but not to get a Framework for Understanding Errors
and Gift Giving by Gallic Givey and Williams, published in
the journal Current Directions in Psychological sci.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
I love that it introduces the phrase errors in gift
giving because that's actually it's like a clinical description of
exactly the phenomenon they're talking about. So it is, it's precise,
it's clear, it's accurate. But it also kind of softens
the blow of talking about this we were originally thinking about,
you know, maybe we should talk about bad Christmas gifts.
But the bad that's such a strong word, and are

(17:23):
the gifts really bad? I mean, the truth is that
a lot of gifts. People might appreciate the fact that
the gift was given while also recognizing that there is
some amount of error in the selection or delivery of
the gift. Something did not go perfectly right here.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, I agree, error is the way to go, because
you can still air in giving a good gift. And
so I just once more, I just want to assure
everyone out there, you're doing a great job. Don't worry
about this year's holiday gift giving selections. You did good,
but maybe take all of this into the next cycle

(18:04):
of gifts that you acquire.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Everybody but me did a great job. I'm still terrified.
Oh and by the way, since you're mentioning the main
paper you're drawing from here, I wanted to go ahead
and flag another the other main source that I want
to draw from in this episode. So this is a
different paper which is from twenty twenty three. It has
actually two of the same authors as your twenty sixteen article.

(18:28):
This one is called an Integrative Review of Gift Giving
Research and Consumer Behavior and Marketing, published in the Journal
of Consumer Psychology by Julian Givey, Laura Berg, Tina M. Lowry,
and Jeff Gallic Julian Gives of West Virginia University, Laura
berg Is from the University of Bokum in Germany, Tina

(18:48):
Lowry of h GC Paris, and Jeff Gallic of Carnegie
Mellon And the goal of this paper is to do
a large systematic review of the academic literature on gift gives,
drawing on a bunch of different disciplines anthropology and sociology, psychology,
and most heavily on business marketing and consumer studies research.

(19:09):
Sort of a big roundup of what has been studied
and what have people found out when it comes to
consumer gifting. Might not come as a surprise that this
is a topic of immense interest in the field of
business marketing and consumer studies, because again, gift giving is
big business. So as you might guess, this paper gets
into a bunch of different subject areas, but I wanted

(19:32):
to mention a couple of sections relevant to our subject today.
One of them is givers' motivations, so it looks into
studies on the question why do people give gifts and
what leads them to select the gifts they do. Another
section of focus is on givers inputs quote that is,

(19:52):
whether the thought and money a giver puts into a
gift is more important to givers or recipients and then
most important the same subject matter as the earlier twenty
sixteen paper giver recipient mismatches, quote discrepancies between the types
of gifts given and the types of gifts people prefer

(20:12):
to receive. And I think I should note that most
of this research tends to be focused on interpersonal consumer
gift giving, so the exchanging of gifts between regular people.
It's less relevant to things like gifts in a business context.
You know, you're buying a gift for your client, or

(20:33):
a free gift with purchase, or a holiday gift from
employer to employees. So that's its own kind of thing.
It has different dynamics, you know, obviously different dynamics for
things like state gifts or forgiving yourself a little gift.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Oh wow, that last one's probably a topic onto itself,
because yeah, as we'll be getting into here, much of
the gift giving is going to depend on two major
points or more than a really points, I guess, but
it's going to depend on the moment where the gift
is given and received and then like the aftermath of it.
But with giving yourself a little gift. There's also the

(21:08):
purchase point, which could be I mean, especially nowadays we're
ordering things online, So it's kind of like you have
three potential areas to consider, right the moment you buy
that thing for yourself, the moment you receive that thing
for yourself, and then the rest of your life with
that thing. Which is the most exciting?

Speaker 3 (21:29):
You know?

Speaker 2 (21:30):
I think the depressing answer, without looking at any literature
on that particular topic, would be that it's just the
first thing, that is just the purchase point.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, that's the most exciting. Okay, Well, do you want
to start by talking about the twenty sixteen paper.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah? Yeah, So the researchers here begin by acknowledging the
depth of pre existing research on gift giving and social psychology,
with one of the big take hombs being that most
of us are not jagnotogy and don't actually excel in
gift giving, which is to say, if we try it all,
we're not all that great at predicting the other person's preference.

(22:05):
This self other mismatch was studied in a key nineteen
ninety seven paper from C. And Weber. Now, my thinking
on all of this, as I got into the sources,
was was, yeah, this seems right. There are so many
ways to mess up a gift or potentially mess it up.
And again I'm not getting into the actual bad gift giving,
but errors in gift giving, ways that you could ways

(22:27):
you could have done better in retrospect. Now, it was
interesting to jump into this paper again mostly having done
all of my holiday shopping but then second guessing everything
and also just reflecting on my own life as a
gift giver, because I think, for the most part I've
really leaned on that it's the thought that counts, even
if I'm being fairly self judgmental and asking myself how

(22:51):
much thought did I really put into any of those
gifts where it was the thought that counts. And you know,
I think we have to acknowledge too that now, especially
with the use of Amazon wish lists and so forth,
it takes a lot of the guesswork as well as
the skill and the personal touch out of gift giving.
So I don't know, it becomes harder for me to think, oh,

(23:12):
it's the thought that counts if all I'm doing is
thinking about putting your Amazon wishless link into the browser
and then picking something and it even makes sure that
it hasn't been purchased already, so it takes the guesswork
out of it.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
Well, Rob, I don't know if your sources mentioned this
as much, but fortunately the research that I was looking
at indicates that you shouldn't be worried about that kind
of thought as much. That matters to recipients far less
than people think they do.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, they do get into that a little bit. That
is part of the mismatch.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, there are different kinds of ways that thought can count,
and specifically the brainstorming original ideas and searching around for
the perfect gift that matters more in the minds of
gift givers than in the minds of gift receivers. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yes, so in the paper gallic at All stress that quote.
There can be major consequences for giving ill chosen gifts,
and that is explored in a couple of cited papers.
A poorly chosen gift can annoy or even drive a
wedge between the two people in the relationship. Again, everyone
out there, you're doing fine. Don't worry about this too much.

(24:21):
But yeah, on one level, it does sound pretty pretty extreme,
and I don't think we should lose too much sleep
over it. But I think we can all imagine if
we're spiraling and we're using worst case scenarios, we can
imagine the sort of gift, bad gift we might receive
that might make us ask questions about the other person

(24:42):
and our relationship with them. Do they truly understand this?
That would make you feel less seen by the giver?
Like if I were to receive a Beef Jerky of
the Month club membership in the Jason Statham sixth Film
collection on Blu Ray, I would wonder if this person
truly knows me, or if they do know me? Like,
what are they trying to say with this, with these

(25:04):
these strangely chosen items?

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Well, I know you're not a beef guy, but I
don't know, Rob. I feel like I know you pretty well,
and I I would have put it fifty to fifty
that you would be into the Jason Stathum. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
I don't I mean say, I mean, I'm down for
a deluxe Blu Ray of Ghost of Mars okay, but
but I'm just saying it would it would? It would
make me wonder, It's like, why did they go for that?

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Can I just feel in a random thing that I
was trying to think of an overly specific gift earlier,
like a thing that you would receive and you'd be like,
why did they get me this? And for some reason,
the object that popped into my mind is a velvet football. Ooh,
what is that? I don't know. It came from deep
in the void.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
It does sound useless but also luxurious. So yes, it's
a perfect.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
Gift, like expensive, but you can't use it and I
don't really I don't like football and I don't have
anything velvet. So why did I get this? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Oh, I have a bad gift for you. This one
is based on true stories. I'm combining them into a
single gift. But you open the box and it contains
a chick track warning you about how dangerous dungeons and
Dragons is to your soul. I want half of a
jog suit. You will receive the other half of the
jogsuit the following Christmas as a separate gift, and the

(26:24):
two the up the bottom of the top will never
match because one will have had a year's worth of
fading if you wear it.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
Oh amazing, it was that done maliciously or just I
don't know half of the tracks.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
I don't know that, I don't know why it happened,
but based on a true story.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Well, I've got some interesting feedback on that one later on,
because there's at least some research showing that incomplete gifts
are not always unwelcome.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
M Okay, all right, yeah, I have about incomplete Well,
I have a bit about gifts that are perhaps artificially
divvied up into multiple gifts. But I don't think they
were talking about from Christmas to Christmas?

Speaker 3 (27:02):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Now, the paper refers to many of the ways that
gift giving can err, the various errors that you might
commit in giving a gift. They involve such questions as as,
what if the gift you give is too expensive or
too cheap, what if the gift isn't desirable on one

(27:24):
level or another, What if the gift isn't feasible again
on one level or another. What if it's too material,
what if it's too intangible? What if it's not thoughtful enough?
What if it's too traditional? What if it's not traditional enough?
And then you might even ask yourself, is it socially responsible?

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Like?

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Have I made a socially responsible choice in picking out
this gift for the other person. And naturally, I, like
most of you, have seen enough Christmas media in my
time to add some additional ways that it can go wrong.
What if the gift you're giving bears the same telltale
L shaped boxes all the other gifts that the recipient
received this year?

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Oh is that? What is the L shaped box? The
specific thing?

Speaker 2 (28:08):
That's just a moment in Christmas vacation. He's given the
gift to his boss and there are all these gifts
in the background, and they're all the exact same shape.
You've made some sort of air because he's getting a
lot of whatever that is.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
Well, I have a very specific story like that in
my family, which is a couple of years ago. My
father in law and I both got my mother in
law the same gift for Christmas, and it was a
very specific gift. It was, if you can believe it,
we both got her a like an aquamarine or I

(28:42):
don't know, my colors like teal a teal ukulele.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Oh wow, yes, yeah, you can't use two of those, right,
I mean, I'm not a musician, but not without some
exceptional toast skill.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Yeah, we really couldn't believe it happened, but it did.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
All right, here's some more. What if the gift you're
giving is in fact your own cat wrapped up in
a box. That also occurs in Christmas vacation. Does my
gift involve felony kidnapping? That's another one from that film.
What if the recipient sold all of their hair to
buy your gift, and now your hair care related gift
is useless, at least in the short term.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
I don't recognize where that's from either.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Then the gift of the magi, right, Oh okay, yeah,
I mean it's one of those depending on what side
of the gift of the Magi you're on. It's like
the hair will grow back. I don't know about the
time piece, right. What if the recipient is much too
old for the pjs you sent. We're all familiar with
that one. What if the gift is in fact a
high maintenance supernatural pet that will reproduce and mutate into

(29:44):
destructive monsters if not cared for properly.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
Oh yeah, your classic Grimlin problem.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yes, yeah, I'm going to come back to that one
as a prime example. And then, of course, are my
gifts magical rings that will bend nations to my will.
That's more in well in the category though of malicious gifts,
though as opposed to any kind of good natured gift giving.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
Seems great at first, but the preciousness takes on a
really nasty quality over time.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
That's right, So whether we're dealing with real or fictional gifts.
The authors drive home that everyone in the scenario is
trying to give a good gift. After all, no one
wants to be thought of as a lousy gift giver.
There's a basic social contract involved in all of this,
and we try to hit at least our criteria for
a good gift, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it

(30:35):
fits their criteria for a good gift as well. And
in this they present a possible unifying explanation of why
errors in gift giving occur.

Speaker 3 (30:45):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
We propose that many giver recipient discrepancies can be at
least partially explained by the notion that when evaluating the
quality of a gift, givers primarily focus on the moment
of the exchange, where recipients instead mostly focus on how
valuable a gift will be throughout their ownership of it.
Givers and receivers have different perspectives on what makes a

(31:09):
gift valuable. Givers interpret that to mean that the gift
will make the recipient feel delighted, impressed, surprised, and or
touched when he or she receives and opens it, whereas
recipients find value in factors that allow them to better
utilize and enjoy a gift during their subsequent ownership of it.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
This is a major theme in the twenty twenty three
paper as well. One of the main reasons they identify
for gift giving going wrong is that givers focus on
the moment they're opening the gift. They want it to
be delightful in that moment, whereas recipients value much more
gifts that continue to delight or or provide use for

(31:49):
them over time. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
They also summarize this as coming down to quote giver
recipient asymmetries and evaluations of particular aspects of the gift,
aspects of the giver or aspects of the recipient. And
so my mind instantly went to Grimlins and all of this,
then to practical real world examples, but then back to Grimlins.
So that's where I'm going to stay for a minute.

(32:12):
If you're familiar with the classic holiday horror comedy film.
When Peter's dad Randall buys the Magua Gizmo or the
Magua that will be renamed Gizmo from mister Wing's store
in Chinatown, he wasn't thinking about the long term challenges
of owning an exotic, supernatural cynia pet. He was thinking
about that moment of exchange. And it is a memorable

(32:36):
moment in the film. I mean, you can look it up,
there are clips of it online. But when Billy meets
Gizmo for the first time, it's cute and everybody loves it.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
I mean, it's hard to say no to Gizmo exactly,
even I know all the dangers, and if I received Gizmo,
I would still want to give him a big hug.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, And this is something to keep in mind. The
gift of the magua here in Grimlins is successful. Billy
is enraptured. Billy's dad, of course, is eating it up
because he's given what seems to be a great gift.
Mom even the dog agree that this Gizmo chap is wonderful.
If they had any clue what they were getting into
and what the rest of the movie and the sequel

(33:16):
is going to consist of gift ownership, then they surely
see that this is a prime error in gift giving.
He has given Billy a gift that is going to
be arduous to own. It's gonna, in the best cases,
it's going to involve a lot of upkeep, and it's
also it's going to get a number of people killed,
at least in the first movie.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Yeah, if your gift will wheel a chainsaw against you,
I think that probably counts as an error.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah. If it will potentially bring about the downfall of
New York City and can only be stopped, you know,
via some last minute heroics, then yeah, it might have
been an error. So the authors of the twenty sixteen paper,
they described that the attributes of a good gift basically
break down as follows. The gifts should be the gift

(34:04):
should be desirable, it should be surprising, and it should
symbolize the giver recipient relationship. And I would argue that
the gizmo does seem to check off these boxes. Gizmo
is desirable, he's certainly surprising, and the gift does seem
to on some levels symbolize the inventive nurturing relationship between
Billy and his father.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Yeah, the way it symbolizes the giver recipient relationship. In
some of the literature, this is called this is a
type of thoughtfulness when we say the thought counts and
giving a gift. This is relationship oriented thoughtfulness, as opposed
to the non relationship oriented thoughtfulness, which is just like

(34:47):
the giver spending a lot of time and effort like
brainstorming a gift. But the gift might not actually, you know,
be a result of a personal sacrifice that you know
that shows how much the person loves you, or might
not have something to do with the relationship between the
giver and the recipient.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
Yeah, there can be a lot of asymmetry there between
how much thought you're putting into it, how much thought
you expect other people to interpret in your gift giving,
and so forth. And you can imagine the asymmetry going
the other direction too, Like you imagine a scenario where
someone's just like, yeah, I give lacy underwear to everybody
for Christmas, and people who are on the receiving end
of this, they might they might judge it to have

(35:28):
veered over into inappropriateness, saying like, what are you trying
to say about our relationship. We don't really have a
lacy underwear holiday gift giving relationship.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Yeah, and this is one of the risks inherent in
all gift giving is that an inappropriate gift of some
sort will be interpreted as an incorrect interpretation of the relationship.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
The twenty sixteen paper Galic at All include an entire
chart about errors in gift giving, presenting first a gift
giving rule. You know, one of these, like gifts should
be this or that, How the giver and receiver may
differ on the definition and the gift exchange thought process.
So I'm not going to go through all of it.
You can look up this paper online. It's it's it's
it's you know, it's a fun paper to roll through.

(36:20):
But as an example, here's one of the categories gift
giving rule. Gifts should surprise the recipients giver preference unrequested
gifts receiver preference requested gifts giver thought process. Unrequested gifts
will surprise receiver thought process. Personally requested gifts are more valuable.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Yeah, I mean this lines up with some of the
stuff that I was reading that it's not that a
surprise gift is without value to a recipient. Clearly, surprised
does bring some value with it, but it seems that
givers care more about the gift being a surprise than
recipients do. Recipients on average, like to receive things that

(37:04):
they have explicitly asked for, and sometimes are unhappy if
they explicitly ask for something and get something else.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Yeah, I mean, you gave me a magua, but I
need more socks. I had a plan for socks. Now
I have to make a plan for a magwa.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
From what I'm reading, it seems that the place where
a surprise is really delightful to the recipient is not
in what they get, but in getting a gift on
an unexpected occasion. So gifts that are not associated with
a normal gift giving holiday or an expectation that a

(37:40):
gift is incoming a gift that's just unexpected and out
of the blue. On average, those are ranked as more
delightful and exciting to recipients than gifts that come at
a time of gift obligation.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
Interesting. Interesting. The authors argue that a lot of errors
in gift giving come down to conflict between the givers
desire to dazzle in the moment of gift giving, you know,
the opening of the gift, if you will, the unwrapping,
and then the experience of owning said gift on the
part of the recipient. And one example that instantly came
to my mind to draw from The Simpsons is when
mister Burns gives the Simpsons family a giant stone head

(38:17):
that is just comically large. It fills up their entire
living room. Mister Burns clearly is all about dazzling and
making a big show of things here. He has not
given any thought to like, where are they going to
put this head? You know, how are they going to
transport it into the basement for the rest of the
series and so forth.

Speaker 3 (38:35):
Yeah, and often we see it again down in the basement,
like behind a bunch of junk when in later episodes.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, I like how they keep coming back to it.
So the authors drive home that in making this sort
of error again, an error where the giver is focusing
on the moment of the giving as opposed to the
ownership of the gift. The error could hypothetically occur due
to three different methods. Three different things could be going on.

(39:04):
One is that the giver might truly believe that the
recipient will place more value on the wow moment of
giving or opening. And I think that is understandable. It's
a very understandable error to make. I've probably made that
error all the time as well. And part of it,
I think is because there is so much media attention

(39:24):
tied to such a moment. A lot of our memories
as givers are tied to those moments because a lot
of times we don't see ownership of a gift unless
it's even if it's an immediate family member. You don't
necessarily you're not going to keep checking in and observing
the life of that gift, and that individual's actions and
experiences and recipient excitement can be very satisfying. I mean,

(39:48):
there's no denying totally, all right. The second possibility is
the giver realizes that they should be focusing more on
the ownership of the gift versus that wow moment of giving,
but they do it anyway for selfish reasons. They just
want to create that moment. And as the authors get
into elsewhere in the paper, if there's a performance aspect
of it to the whole thing, If they're giving the

(40:09):
gift in front of others, that could be the sort
of thing that sort of corrupts the moment as well.
And then it's also the third possibility is they're simply
so focused on the moment of giving that they just
fail to consider other factors. And I think that's very
reasonable as well. How often are we just super hyper
focused on one particular gift in one particular recipient, Especially

(40:33):
around the holidays, we're giving multiple gifts, We're trying to
check off a number of boxes, and we may just
not consider the life of the gift for that individual,
and we might just lean like I have many times,
on the idea that it's the thought that counts and
if they don't like it, and they might not like it,
they can return it. And the very least I've given
them a very elaborate gift card with extra work involved. Now,

(40:57):
how do you give better gifts? On all of this?
They drive from that. The big answer here, whenever possible,
is just to think as a gift giver, not just
about that that opening of the gift, that that giving
of the gift and the receipt of the gift, but
also the ownership of the gift to whatever degree you can.
And obviously a number of factors are going to influence

(41:19):
the process, including well, you know about the other person
and the details of your relationship. But it sounds like
a good rule of thumb, you know, to whatever degree possible.
You know, you're thinking about the person opening the gift,
think about the week that follows, think about the month
the month that follows. What is ownership of that item
going to look like? M Yeah, but I have to admit, like,

(41:41):
that's not a super fun consideration. It's far more fun.
It's far more exciting to just think about them opening
the box or you know, pulling things out of the
stocking on Christmas morning.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Yeah, I mean, I can't deny the appeal of that
moment of delight when opening a gift. But I don't know,
I can see the I feel like I get a
sense of pleasure thinking about people using a gift over
time that I gave them. That that consistently brings me
a kind of warm glow, which is one of the
self focused reasons we give gifts. In fact, would this

(42:14):
be a good reason or not a good reason? A
good time then to talk about the motives of gift
givers and gift selection.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah, let's get into the motives of it.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Okay, so this is a big thing that the authors
of this later twenty twenty three paper talk about. You know.
They say, when you look at the motives of gift givers,
you can ask this question two different ways. One is
why are you giving a gift? The other is why
did you pick this gift? And they say that the
research really reveals four overarching themes and the motivations for

(42:45):
giving a gift, which the authors call altruism, egoism, social
norm compliance, and diaddic benefits. So altruism, that's pretty straightforward.
That's like the most pure kind of gift giving thing
you can do. It's a desire to bring happiness or
provide utility for the person you're giving the gift too,
no ulterior motive.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
Yeah, this is just pure sanit territory right here. This
is why the big guy does.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
It right now. It's impossible to ever completely rule out
that people could have secret ulterior motives for doing nice
things for others, but I think we can assume that,
at least consciously, people really do sometimes give gifts because
they just want to delight or benefit the recipient. Yeah,
but the other side of the coin is egoism. We've
already touched on a few of these motivations, but there

(43:31):
are reasons for giving gifts and for selecting certain gifts
that benefit the gift giver. So how would giving benefit
the gift giver? One idea is by encouraging reciprocity. A
gift given to elicit something of value being given in return,
maybe to make somebody give you gifts back. A gift

(43:53):
given to create positive emotions in the gift giver, like
that warm glow. You know, we get something out of
it too. It feels nice to have somebody open a
gift and be delighted. A gift given to earn social
approval or status, This one feels a little more Mockavellian.
Sometimes giving a really nice gift is sort of like

(44:13):
a way of bragging, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
Yeah, Yeah, this we might we might be getting into
Jack donaghy territory. You know, the power play of the
exact lift. Yeah, you've dominated your opponent by giving them
a gift far more perfect than anything they could possibly return.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
Well, I think about in Mafia movies, you know, in
Good Fellas, when he's going into the club giving everybody
one hundred dollars. Tip Is that because he's actually really
generous and he wants to benefit their lives? Or is
it because he's showing off how wealthy and powerful he is.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Yeah, he's like, I can give this kind of thoughtless gift.
It doesn't matter to me.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
Yeah. And then there's another thing that the authors call
internalizing external effects. This is giving a gift that, through
its consumption by the recipient, actually provides benefit to the
gift giver. So an example here would be my wife
gets me cooking equipment that I am going to use

(45:06):
to make food for her, you know, And I'm not,
you know, impugning that. I think that's great. I love
getting new cooking equipment. But we both benefit, you know.
I get to use this thing. Also she's going to
get to eat the delicious meals that I make with it.
I think a very common one here is like romantic
couples getting each other clothes or perfume or cologne or

(45:27):
something that they would personally enjoy their partner wearing, you know,
or you know, you can frame this in a positive
way or in a negative way, like I'm going to
get my husband a new jacket so he stops wearing
that embarrassing ratty old one.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Mm. Yeah, and unless you get into the like the
delicate details of the gift giving between two you know,
very well known participants, Yeah, they're going to know how
to walk that line right hopefully.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
So those are altruism and egoism. There are a couple
other things. One is social norm compliance. It's like, we
got new neighbors, We're going over to say hi, aren't
you supposed to bring a gift? I feel like we're
not supposed to go without a gift, So let's put
a bow on this bottle of wine we didn't open yet.
This is a case where you have no strong, independent

(46:17):
desire to give a gift, but you just give one
out of social expectation. You feel like you have to
do it because of the occasion or the relationship. And
here a common emotional motivation forgiving the gift is to
avoid feelings of guilt or to avoid feelings of shame
or embarrassment just for failing to give a gift in

(46:37):
the situation where it would be expected. Yeah. And then finally,
this one I thought was really interesting. This is the
motivation they call diadic benefits. Some research highlights how gift
giving sometimes is motivated by a desire to benefit all
parties within a relationship, sometimes with reference to effects on

(47:00):
the relationship itself. So these would be gifts that establish
a sense of togetherness, like when you know, you give
a family member a framed photo of the family altogether,
or you get something that the family will all use together.
There are gifts that people use to try to strengthen

(47:21):
an insecure romantic relationship. There are gifts that people use
they're kind of still meta referential gifts to clarify what
kind of relationship people have, Like I'm getting you this
gift that says we are more than friends, that sort
of thing. And then there's another thing that I actually
made reference to earlier. And unless we cut that part out,

(47:43):
I don't know. But there's one thing I brought up earlier,
which is the idea of gifts that lower search costs
for both parties through specialization of searches. And this would
be like I bring you gifts from my hometown, you
bring me gifts from your home toown. We're actually saving
each other the work of traveling to get something that

(48:03):
we each would like. Yeah, now I wanted to mention
one more thing, which is egoistic reasons that have been
documented in experiments why people choose certain gifts over others.
Selfish reasons people could have for selecting goods that they know,
or at least suspect are not what the recipient would

(48:25):
like the most. And these were actually really interesting to
me because I was starting to think, like, oh man,
have I ever done anything like this? I don't know,
but there are some interesting documented reasons. One is wanting
to avoid feeling envy. In a paper from twenty nineteen,
Givey and Gallic found that people sometimes give gifts that

(48:47):
they know people want less, but the givers select these
less desirable gifts if the more desirable gift would be
better than the giver's own possessions give her the interpretation here.
The interpretation that they put on this behavior is that
the giver anticipates feeling envious of the gift that they

(49:09):
got for somebody else, and thus they don't get it.
They get them something worse on purpose to avoid devaluing
their own stash of goods. This paper is titled keeping
the Joneses from getting ahead in the first place.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Oh, so this would be like if say you're a
whiskey drinker. Yeah, and you, for whatever reason you decided, Okay,
I need to get a bottle of whiskey as a
gift for this friend, and you want to get them
a nice bottle. But you don't want to get them
a nicer bottle than your nicest bottle of whiskey, because
then you know that you'll feel a certain way about

(49:44):
them having a better bottle than you.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
Exactly, Yes, So people would in some cases go for
the less nice whiskey there, even if they know the
person would like the better one. Another reason that people
might get a less preferred gift is wanting to feel unique.
So in a paper published in twenty twenty, same pair
of authors Gallic and Give Again. These authors are also

(50:07):
both on this twenty twenty three paper and the twenty
sixteen paper. They reported the results of five experiments which
confirmed this phenomenon that people will often give people gifts
that they know the recipient will like less if the
alternative is giving them a more desirable gift that the
giver also owns. So it's like, you know, I, well,

(50:30):
I already have one of those, So I don't want
to get that thing for Jack, even though I know
he would like to have it. I'm going to get
him something different, and the authors interpreted this behavior as
a desire for uniqueness, that givers wanted to feel unique,
and they would feel less unique if the recipient got

(50:52):
this item that the giver already owned, so they choose
something else, you know, so like I'm still the only
person who gets to have this thing. And then finally,
they point to an experiment research by Mary Steffil and
Robin Lebuff from twenty fourteen that found when people are
shopping for multiple different gift recipients, gift givers will give

(51:15):
gifts that they expect people to like less in order
to make sure that everyone gets a different and unique gift.
And this is true if even when the giver believes that, like,
one gift given to everybody is something that they would
all like more, just because they don't want to be
seen as giving the same thing to everybody because it

(51:35):
looks less thoughtful.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
So even if everybody wants a la boo boo, you
you're just gonna only one person gets a la boo
boo because we don't want to decrease the specialness of
that receipt.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
Yeah, I mean some people might get everybody the la
boo boo. But yeah, there are a lot of There
are a lot of people who feel uncomfortable about that.
They feel like it would look unthoughtful of them to
get the same gift for everyone, So they've got to
mix it up and end up getting people stuff that
they even they expect that people will end up liking less.
And then finally, you can imagine how other egoistic motivations

(52:08):
I mentioned earlier in the in the idea of giving
people gifts would also affect the selection of particular gifts.
I was thinking of the the internalizing external effects issue.
So if I'm getting my partner an item of clothing
that I would enjoy seeing them where, or getting them
a perfumer cologne that I like the smell of, you know,

(52:30):
in a way, that's a it's a gift for them,
but it's also a gift for me. And then you
can like kind of move that slider up and down
the scale. Some gifts for them and for me are
really a lot more a gift for me. I'm thinking
of in the Sopranos when Aj gets his mom The
Matrix on DVD for her birthday.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
So I haven't seen the sopranos. But I'm assuming the
scenario here is he really wants to watch the matrix.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
Yes, she's like, haven't seen it? Yeah? And then of
course there there are also these these giver recipient diad benefits.
You know, you can see this in the preference for
material gifts over experiential gifts, because there's a common belief
people have that material gifts will strengthen relationships by acting

(53:18):
as a mnemonic device. So people think, every time she
sees this officially licensed space jam wall clock, she will
think of me because I gave it to her. I
think the research seems kind of mixed on that. I
think maybe actually relationships might be strengthened more by experiential
gifts as opposed to material ones.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Mm.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
But in all of these though, there's there's so many factors.
Because in the paper I was looking at, they brought
up the idea that when it comes to material versus
experience gifts. The thing about experience gifts is generally it's
not like you open the gift and it's like, hey,
you're going on a canoe trip right now, right, It's
it's some time later, So there's kind of a delay

(54:01):
in the full expression of the gift, and depending on
how you're approaching it, like that could in the moment
feel less exciting. It's I guess the well, you know,
it's gonna vary. They're gonna all these other factors are
going to come into play.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Right, I mean, obviously there's going to be individual variation
and all these trends we're talking about. So you know,
even if people feel more closeness from experiential gifts on average,
that's still just going to be on average. I mean
some people, in some cases the material gift is going
to be much preferable depending on what it is and
the person and all that. So you know, there's no
one size fits all for gift giving. This is just

(54:37):
looking at trends basic.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
Yeah, And I mean it's worth saying too, like you
can be the sort of person who in general values
experience over material possessions, and you can still find yourself
in the scenario where a piece of plastic garbage is
going to hit in the way that a gift certificate
for a canoe trip is not. And it doesn't mean
that that's not a great, great gift new trip like

(55:00):
it may that may be the best gift you got
that year, and it's going to lead to memorable moments
down the line, it's going to strengthen relationships. But there's
something about that plastic garbage. Sometimes it just absolutely does hit.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Sometimes it hits it's just great. Okay, So I'm going
to skip ahead to the part of this paper where
they talk about our core idea today, the giver recipient mismatches.
You know, so like why do people end up getting
gifts they don't like or gifts that are less desirable
when a more desirable gift was equally possible. Why do
so many gift exchanges leave people feeling unsatisfied? And again,

(55:34):
these answers are focused on good faith exchanges, genuine errors
in gift giving, not incidents where people give a bad
gift on purpose. And most of this research comes from
experiments in the domain of psychology. A lot of the
stuff they talk about in this paper is more from
like business marketing and stuff, but a lot of this
is psychology. So one big theme they identify for giver

(55:57):
recipient mismatches, in other words, bad gift experiences, is based
on gifting norms. The authors say that givers are too
focused on the informal rules or norms of gift giving,
and they end up giving less desired gifts because of it.
So an example would be certain types of gifts are

(56:17):
associated with certain relationships or certain holidays. The authors mention
experiments showing that on Valentine's Day, givers feel pressure to
give gifts that are appropriate to the occasion, like on
Valentine's Day, you give your romantic partner a piece of jewelry,
even though recipients would actually more often be happier receiving

(56:40):
a gift not traditionally associated with the occasion. Again, these
are just trends. You know. Some people love getting jewelry,
but a lot of people would rather. For example, in
one study, they looked at a lot of people would
rather receive an e reader than a piece of jewelry
on Valentine's Day. But the giver does it feels like
that's not right to them. It's Valentine's Day, so it

(57:00):
needs to be a certain kind of gift.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
But media hasn't programmed us yet to expect an e
reader for Valentine's Day.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yeah, but on average, So yeah, you've got this occasion
or relationship related pressure that is driving the gift giver's
aim off, driving it further away from the target area
that the recipient would actually enjoy the most. Another way
that gift giving norms can lead people astray is that
givers prefer to give new products instead of superior used

(57:32):
products of the same type. It just feels like you're
not supposed to give people something used as a gift.
But you know, often people would rather get a better
thing in used form than a less good thing in
new form. But the giver, they're going to opt for
the new thing because it just doesn't feel right to
give something used.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's weird how that can certainly coexist
with say, putting particular used book on your wish list,
like putting it out there that yeah, I want this book,
and the only way to get it is to get
an old copy from the eighties. There's not a new copy.
But yeah, yeah, when you're actually buying things, you're like, well,
I guess I'm gonna get them the nice one that's
gonna you know, I guess selfishly. You know, we can

(58:15):
even think that's going to reflect on me better that
I actually ponied up and bought them the new edition.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
I love getting used books that that feels like kind
of actually extra special to me. It's got more character
in it.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's got a history. It's sometimes it has
notes in it.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Another example is that of the norms leading people astrays
that givers refrain from gifts that have been given within
the same giver recipient diad before, even when recipients wish
to receive the same familiar gifts again. It just feels
like you're supposed to mix it up, you know, like
you should give something different. But often recipients are happy

(58:51):
to receive an already familiar gift if it's something they
like and could consume again. Okay, next thing. This lines
up very much with the twenty six and paper They
say people are led astray and gift giving by temporal focus.
Givers focus too much on making sure the recipient will
be happy in the moment they open the gift, as

(59:11):
opposed to making sure that it's going to give them
lasting enjoyment or utility over time. So givers seem to
prefer fun gifts that are not very useful, while recipients
prefer useful gifts. And the idea of fun gifts that
are not very useful. It makes me think of a
lot of the things we give each other around Christmas.

(59:32):
And this is not to slam these things, because I
give these things too. I mean they are fun at Christmas,
but like weird little novelties that are funny when you
first open them.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
Yeah, yeah, And it is weird to reflect on these
because some of these certainly do find their way into
the garbage, generally by way of a junk drawer two
or three years later. But I have to admit, like,
I have some of those gifts that are still in
my bedside table, and I'd never use them, use them,
but I do look at them occasionally and I'm like, oh,

(01:00:04):
I remember when I received this gift and it was
novel and surprising, and therefore it gets to stay in
the drawer.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
Oh well, yeah. I mean sometimes, like we said earlier,
the same object that you would not value that much
or buy for yourself, if it is a gift, you know,
for cinemental reasons, it can take on value for you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Yea, even if it's kind of like you know, pointless
centiment where if someone says that came up and said
why are you keeping that? You got to throw it out?
I would be like, oh yeah, okay, that's a good point.
I'll do that, but it can it's sticky, just sticky
enough to remain in my life.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Okay, this next example I think will be really interesting
because it kind of runs counter to your example of
a bad gift that's like the half of the sweat
sweatsuit and then the other half later. Uh. The authors
here say that studies have found givers are anxious about
giving gifts that are incomplete or somehow not yet matured.

(01:00:58):
Recipients are often quite happy with gifts that are incomplete
or will grow in enjoyment or utility over time. So
a few examples here, givers would rather give a less
desirable bouquet of flowers that are already in bloom than
a more desirable bouquet that is not yet in bloom,

(01:01:19):
and so like givers are, they would be anxious about
the fact that the flowers are not ready yet when
they're given. They're only going to achieve their maximum beauty later,
and recipients seem to care less about this. Another thing
the authors found is that a lot of times recipients
are perfectly happy to get partial contributions toward more highly

(01:01:41):
desired products. So I could buy and give you a
complete fifty dollars dinner plate set, or I could make
a fifty dollars contribution toward the cost of a one
hundred dollars dinner plate set that you definitely do want more.
I mean, obviously, if you actually don't like the one
hundred dollars one, that doesn't matter. But if you like
the one hundred dollars one more and that's the one

(01:02:02):
you want, Recipients are often happy to get this kind
of incomplete contribution toward a gift, and givers don't really
expect this.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
One of the things this is slightly related. One of
the things that they went into in the twenty sixteen
paper is that the givers emphasis on that wow moment,
that moment of reception, that opening could potentially lead to
the situation where they take one gift and break it

(01:02:33):
up into parts and give it in multiple installments, not
spread out over multiple years, but certainly like all at once.
So let's say I am going to give you that
dinner plate set. I'm going to wrap each piece of
the dinner plate set individually, and therefore I get instead
of getting like one rush from you opening the gift,
I'm gonna get multiple rushes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
Yeah, it's ten gifts.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Yeah, yeah, but I think you can easily imagine where
this could become tiresome, depending on if you're artificially breaking
things up too much.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Yeah, okay, one more subtopic, getting towards the end. Here,
they talk about risk aversion. You know, they say givers
or risk averse. They often shy away from gifts that
could be perceived as overly sentimental, maybe gifts that assume
too much familiarity. You know, we're cautious about doing that.

(01:03:24):
We don't want to send the wrong message or make
people feel awkward or embarrassed. People are cautious about giving
gifts that require too much knowledge of the receiver's personality,
So givers tend to prefer material gifts that match the
receiver's superficial tastes because it just feels less socially dangerous.

(01:03:46):
So like, I know you like pizza, so I got
you some pizza themed chachkes, you know, some little plastic
pizza things. Versus I know you love architecture, so I
got you tickets for us to go on an architecture tour. Obviously, again,
this is going to vary by the relationship and the
individual case. But the latter is often preferred. Recipients on

(01:04:09):
average report feeling more happiness and more closeness to givers
when they receive an experience as opposed to a material gift,
and also when the gift has something includes thoughtfulness of
like the recipient's deep personal preferences, when it indicates knowledge
of their personality intimately.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
Yeah, this makes sense. I think we all know people.
Maybe we are those people where you've received like one
toy pig or or you know, some sort of maybe
you have a particular dog breed in your life and
someone gives you a nickknack based on that preference, and
then they just begin to accumulate because that becomes the
safe thing to give you, oh so and sows into cuttlefish,

(01:04:51):
and then all they get are cuttlefish nickknacks.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
Right, So there is a lot of error. There are
a lot of errors in gift giving just based on
risk aversion, givers are more inclin line to pick something
they think the recipient is highly likely to enjoy a
little bit, as opposed to having less certainty about something
that the recipient might enjoy a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
And I want to I want to interrupt here and
just go ahead and let everybody know you're doing fine,
don't worry.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Fine, it's because.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
You might be thinking, now, geez, I just did this,
and I have to admit, like, I literally just mailed
a Christmas gift to Joe where I'm like, is that
plastic garbage? Does that? Does that mean nothing? Is that
an expected choski? Maybe? But it's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
I love We've already talked about this earlier. Yeah, I
mean they're they're great. Yeah. Yeah, Actually I don't think
I've told you about this yet. But a Christmas ornament
that that y'all send us one year is like a
little skeleton that goes on the Christmas tree. Our our
daughter loves it, you know, she keeps pointing to it.

(01:05:56):
She's like, he's a little skeleton guy dances in Okay,
so oh, one last thing here. In terms of risk aversion,
givers sometimes seem to prefer giving gifts that are high
in perceived quality and low in quantity as opposed to
the other way around, mainly due to risk aversion fear

(01:06:17):
of being seen as having bad taste. So you get
somebody one expensive bottle of wine versus two bottles of
cheaper wine. That's not always what the recipient would want.
Some people might prefer that, but sometimes recipients would prefer
the two bottles, but the giver is afraid of some
perceived risk in selecting the cheaper label.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Okay, so you even give them the smaller nice bottle
as opposed to the box that they really want.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
Well, I mean again, it just depends on the person.
Like if you know the person's preferences, give them what
they want. Here, we're just like looking at averages. So
an one last thing here is about thoughtfulness. We talked
about thoughtfulness earlier, but it comes back to this distinction
between relationship oriented thoughtfulness and non relationship oriented thoughtfulness. Again,

(01:07:05):
on average, recipients like relationship oriented thought so like stuff
that indicates a strong personal connection that symbolizes the relationship itself,
or maybe indicates a personal sacrifice of time and effort
in like making a handmade gift for someone or something
like that. So it's like a manifestation of the relationship.

(01:07:29):
Non relationship oriented thoughtfulness actually leads gift givers astray. It's
like sending them in the wrong direction. For example, givers
tend to prefer more tailored, narrow gifts, like a gift
card that can only be used at one particular store,
where more on average, recipients would prefer more versatile gifts,

(01:07:50):
like the gift you know, the credit card kind of
gift card that you can use basically anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Yeah, but who wants to give that like that? Yeah,
that's the kind of that's that's a great Crims gift
to receive from your place of employment.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
Well, I mean, that's That's the other thing the authors
talk about this cash gifts versus non cash gifts. They say, actually,
givers are too pessimistic about giving cash. Obviously, some people
are going to be insulted by getting cash, but gift
givers overestimate how common that reaction is. Givers feel like
people will not like receiving cash, will not appreciate it,

(01:08:27):
But recipients on average like getting cash much more often
than people expect. People feel like, I don't know, it
feels like there's something impersonal about a cash gift when
you're in the gift giving mode, But it just feels
less that way for people on average in gift receiving mode.
There was an interesting finding from nineteen eighty three about

(01:08:48):
this that was a study that found people compensate for
this anxiety about cash giving cash gifts being taken as
rude or impersonal. They compensate by giving more cash when
they give cash gifts, then they would spend on an
in kind gift for the same person and occasion. So
if I'm buying you a gift, maybe my price limit

(01:09:11):
is forty dollars, But if I'm just giving you cash,
I feel kind of bad about it, So I'm going
to give you sixty dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Interesting, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:09:19):
And then one last thing I want to emphasize, because
they do say this, it is not necessarily a bad
idea to get somebody a gift that they have already
received in the past. Some people might not like that,
but if it's something people like, you know, a lot
of people want to get it again.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's not going to apply to
every category of saying. Obviously, how many copies of Monopoly
do you need in your right right? But yeah, it's
like they receive that same bottle of wine last year. Well,
as they liked it, there's a good chance they are
in need of a new bottle. So yeah, I could
see that very much being the case.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Okay, Obviously, this paper gets into a whole bunch of
other stuff. But I think I'm going to have to
cap it there that that's what's most relevant to our
discussion today. But I do just want want to emphasize
again at the end, like the stakes are low in
you know, in secure relationships. Uh, it really is mostly
the thought that counts. It is nice to get people
gifts that they really will enjoy and use. But but yeah,

(01:10:15):
you know, if it's not the perfect gift, and almost
nothing is, there's it's not there's not a huge downside
most of the time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
Yeah, yeah, you've probably done a great job this season,
and you're gonna do a great job next year. But
maybe next year you'll be just a little a little
better by thinking about, you know, at least some of
these broad categories we've discussed here. All Right, we're gonna
go ahead and close out this episode of stuff to
blow your mind. We'd love to hear from everyone out there,
because you know, everyone's gonna have thoughts on this. You're

(01:10:43):
gonna have personal bits of wisdom related to gift giving.
You're gonna have some examples of some errors in gift
giving that that that you have committed and that others
have committed and all that is fair game, so as
a right in we'd love to hear from you. Just
a reminder to everyone out there, The Stuff to Blow
Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we put

(01:11:07):
out a short form episode, and on Fridays we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:11:14):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

(01:12:00):
at my poet us