The Secret to Gift-Giving

With the holidays fast approaching, many of us are hunting for that special something for the special someones in our lives. So why is it so hard to find the right gift? This week, we revisit a favorite 2022 conversation with researcher Jeff Galak. We'll discuss why the presents we give for holidays and birthdays often miss their mark, and how to become a better gift-giver.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In "The Gift of the Magi," a short story written by O. Henry and published in 1905, a young husband and wife each struggle privately with a dilemma. Christmas is coming, and neither has enough money to buy the other a gift. Della has only $1.87 saved up. Jim has almost nothing. You probably know how the story turns out. Della sells her beautiful, long hair in order to buy Jim a fine chain for his watch, the most valuable thing he owns.

• 0:40Shankar Vedantam?

  Meanwhile, Jim sells his watch to pay for a set of expensive combs for Della's hair. Each gift negates the other. At the end of the story, O. Henry writes, "The Magi, as you know, were wise men, wonderfully wise men, who brought gifts to the babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication." And here, I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat

• 1:21Shankar Vedantam?

  who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wiser these days, "Let it be said that of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the wisest. Everywhere, they are wisest. They are the Magi." In other words, it's the thought that counts. That's a sweet idea, but is it true? Today on the show, modern psychology takes on an ancient problem.

• 2:04Shankar Vedantam?

  Gifts and gift-giving are as old as humanity itself. Over the centuries, humans have used gifts to express love, offer admiration, and obtain favors.

• 2:19Shankar Vedantam?

  New research identifies why the presents we offer for birthdays and holidays often miss their mark. How to become a better gift giver, this week, on Hidden Brain.

• 2:43Shankar Vedantam?

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• 3:24Shankar Vedantam?

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• 4:05Shankar Vedantam?

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• 4:22Shankar Vedantam?

  All of us know what it's like to get a great gift, the kind we receive with pleasure and that we remember for a long, long time afterwards. All of us also remember, well, the other kind of gift, the board game that doesn't interest us, the dashed-off, last-minute bauble, the inappropriate item of clothing. At Carnegie Mellon University, Jeff Galick has spent a lot of time thinking about gifts and gift-giving. He has learned a lot about bad gifts. Jeff Galick, welcome to Hidden Brain.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 4:56Shankar Vedantam?

  Jeff, I understand that growing up as an American with Jewish-Ukrainian roots, your family put on a big celebration on New Year's Day every year. Can you tell me what that gathering was like when you were a small child?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  So we had this tradition where our immediate family, as well as some close friends, would all gather. And there was a tradition of exchanging gifts. These were typically not your major Christmas-sized gifts, but something minimal that would just fulfill the needs that people have for this gift-giving exchange. That was basically the nature of it.

• 5:29Shankar Vedantam?

  Got it. So you were around 10 years old at the time. And on one of these occasions, you were presented with a New Year's gift by one of your relatives. What was the gift? And paint a picture for me of the moment when you received it.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm roughly 10 years old. And as you can imagine, as a child, receiving gifts is a lot of fun, and getting new things is always joyous. And everybody's going around handing out their gifts, one at a time. And I do remember distinctly this family member, this was a distant family member, giving me a pretty large item, which is already exciting. We tend to think large items are going to be great. And upon unwrapping it, I found that it was a tin of popped popcorn. And I had actually...

• 6:12Speaker 01

  I had absolutely no idea what to do with this. I mean, it was just the biggest letdown, right? As a kid, you want toys or candy or something that's going to make you have a lot of fun. And a tin of popcorn, it was just not anything remotely what I was expecting. So to say I was disappointed is probably an understatement. I think I was a polite child and I said, thank you, and we moved on with our evening. But yeah, it was not exactly the perfect gift.

• 6:36Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand another time you got a keychain from some Caribbean island as one of these gifts?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  That's right. It was a keychain that somebody picked up as a souvenir on some Caribbean adventure. And it was given to me in this New Year's context exchange, which just doesn't make any sense. I wasn't at that island. I was a 10-year-old who doesn't have any keys. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing with this. But again, you say politely, thank you, and move on with the evening.

• 7:00Shankar Vedantam?

  So I understand that researchers have studied the effects that bad gifts have on receivers. When you receive that tub of popcorn from your relative, how did it make you feel towards the gift giver?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, admittedly, as a child, I think my feelings were pretty thin. I don't think I had too many deep thoughts at that moment. But you can imagine very easily that when you receive a bad gift, what it shows is that somebody's not very thoughtful, right? They haven't considered what the recipient's experience is going to be like. I was pretty disappointed as a kid. Kids get over things quickly, and so I moved on with my life. But there's a version where that relationship isn't really benefited at all. And if anything, there's some real harm done, right? It's a signal that you're not treating the person with respect and thoughtfulness.

• 7:46Shankar Vedantam?

  Now, a bad gift or a gift from someone you don't particularly like leaves you with some obligation to reciprocate. So now you don't just have a bad gift, you're left with the obligation to respond. Can you talk a moment about the role that obligation plays in gift giving and the effect it has on the relationships between people?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, obligations are probably the single biggest reason that gifts are given in the first place, you know, for Christmas or for a birthday or an anniversary or a graduation. And when you get a gift, it feels like you absolutely have to return that gesture at an appropriate moment. It could be in that same gift exchange if it's a holiday season, or it might just be the next birthday that comes up for that person. And so doubling down on you received a bad gift, you don't feel connected to that person at all because they've shown that they're not thoughtful. And now you have the burden of actually going out and getting them a gift, somebody who you probably don't care about? That's a big problem.

• 8:40Shankar Vedantam?

  There's been some work looking at how bad gifts carry more than just psychological costs. They also carry economic costs. Back in 1993, the economist Joel Wolfogle published a famous paper called "The Deadweight Loss of Christmas." What was the paper about, Jeff?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Sure, it's a wonderful title, too, right? It's so bleak. But the paper basically says that if I have $100 and I spend it on myself, the chance that I get myself something that's truly worth $100 to me is very high because I know my own preferences, right? I know what it is that I want. I know what would make me happy. But if you, Shankar, are going to get me a gift for that same price point, the chances of that matching my preferences are much lower because, well, you're not me. And so the likelihood that you're going to be able to, you know, drill into my head and figure out exactly what's going to make me happy is smaller. So there's a loss. But the utility is lower for me as the recipient because I'm getting something that's less enjoyable.

• 9:43Shankar Vedantam?

  Joel Wolfogle concluded in his paper that, quote, "It's likely that receiving a gift will leave the recipient worse off than if she had made her own consumption choice with an equal amount of cash. I find that holiday gift giving destroys between 10% and 1/3 of the value of gifts."

• 10:05Shankar Vedantam?

  I asked Jeff if his experiences with bad gifts and the obligations they brought with them made him less inclined to be part of the gift giving economy.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Maybe this is a broader conversation, but I feel like gift giving as an enterprise in our society is really problematic, right? You think about the burden that it places on gift givers in terms of financial expenses. But they feel obligated to it. They feel like they have to engage in this activity, even if it comes at the expense of their own financial well-being. And so it's very hard to justify these expenses. And yeah, I mean, I think to answer your question, I do often question my own involvement in the gift giving exchange.

• 10:42Shankar Vedantam?

  Do you believe that it's time to stop giving gifts altogether?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I think it's time for us to rethink the way that we give gifts.

• 10:53Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, a better way forward. Understanding how to become a better gift giver. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

• 11:12Shankar Vedantam?

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• 11:44Shankar Vedantam?

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• 12:29Shankar Vedantam?

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• 12:40Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. When big holidays roll around, many of us find ourselves awash in bad gifts. We may smile and say thank you, but inside we ask, what made you think I would want something so hideous? At Carnegie Mellon University, Jeff Galak studies the psychology of gift-giving. Jeff, many of us dream of giving the perfect gift, something that is surprising and meaningful, that sends the recipient over the moon. I want to play you a clip of what the perfect gift-giving moment looks like in our fantasies. This is from the TV show The Big Bang Theory, where the character Penny, who works as a waitress at a restaurant, gives her neighbor Sheldon, who's a theoretical physicist and

• 13:24Shankar Vedantam?

  a huge Star Trek fan, a most unusual present.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Here.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  Oh, a napkin.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Turn it over.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  To Sheldon, live long and prosper.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Leonard Nimoy.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  He came into the restaurant. Sorry, the napkin's dirty. He wiped his mouth with it.

• 13:57Speaker 03

  I possess the DNA of Leonard Nimoy?

• 14:03Shankar Vedantam?

  So acquiring the DNA of Mr. Spark himself earned Penny the reaction we all look for when we give gifts. In reality, of course, things usually don't turn out like this. Jeff, you've studied how and why gift giving goes wrong. And one significant cause of bad gifts is that gift givers and gift receivers are focused on entirely different timeframes. What are gift givers focused on?

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Gift givers overwhelmingly are focused on that moment of exchange. So in the clip that you just played, right? That moment that Sheldon opens up the gift and sees that it's from Leonard Nimoy, that is what gift givers are trying to optimize on. They're trying to say, how can I put the biggest smile on someone's face the moment that they open the gift and realize what it is that they have?

• 14:47Shankar Vedantam?

  So what are recipients focused on?

• 14:50Speaker 01

  To some extent, they're focused on that as well. But to a greater extent, they're also thinking about the experience of that gift over the ownership of the gift. So when you receive something, in the moment, it might make you happy, but does it actually provide you value and utility and joy for the duration of owning whatever it is that you've received? And sometimes the things that bring you happiness in the moment are not the things that bring you happiness in the long term.

• 15:13Shankar Vedantam?

  So this fundamental difference in priorities, a focus on the immediate and the short term versus a focus on the long term, produces other mismatches. Tell us about the surprise factor, Jeff.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  The surprise is something that gift givers think is critical to a recipient. So when I give you a gift, I have this belief that you will only value that gift if you don't expect receiving it. And over and over again, we find that that is just not true. If you think about a choice that a gift giver has, they can either give something that they're pretty sure is going to be a successful gift. It's something that they know that the recipient is going to receive well, because maybe they've told them in the past they like that category of products. But that's not surprising, right? If I tell you that I like baseball cards and you get me a pack of baseball cards, I mean, that's great, but you know, I knew that you were going to get that for me because I've already expressed that preference. And so as a giver, you're reluctant to do that because it minimizes on some of that surprisingness.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  And so givers tend to think that, you know, making that surprising gesture is what drives a good gift. And that's just not true.

• 16:20Shankar Vedantam?

  Givers also seem to care a lot about how a gift is presented. Do recipients care as much?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Again, to a much lesser extent. Certainly, beautiful wrapping paper and a beautiful packaging will affect the immediate, but those get thrown out two seconds after somebody opens a gift. And so they're really not providing any long-term value.

• 16:38Shankar Vedantam?

  So it looks like gift seekers are seeking this wow factor. They care about the moment the gift is given, the surprise it produces, the reaction it elicits. Can you talk about the idea that one consequence of this has to do with our propensity to give gifts that are unusual, dramatic, and luxurious?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  This often plays out in things like wedding registries. So you have a couple getting married. They probably very thoughtfully consider the items that they need to start their life together. They put that information out there. They tell you, here are the things we want from the stores that we want them. And then somebody goes off registry and buys them some random junk that they have no need for, because somehow that's going to be seen as more surprising and more special. And it's just so counter to what the couple is actually asking for.

• 17:25Shankar Vedantam?

  One of your co-authors once wrote a paper titled, "Sometimes It's Okay to Give a Blender."

• 17:30Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 17:31Shankar Vedantam?

  And I take it that recipients in general care less about the unusual and the glamorous.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Again, it's not that they don't care about it at all, of course. But if it's glamorous, but it doesn't actually serve a purpose for someone, it's almost like a white elephant gift. Like, it's more of a burden than anything else.

• 17:43Shankar Vedantam?

  So, isn't it interesting, Jeff, that in popular culture, when we have these gift-giving exchanges, givers often want to be seen as creative. Can you talk a little bit about this? That part of the motivation of the gift giver is to be seen as a creative gift giver?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  So, this kind of speaks to the motivations that people have for giving gifts in the first place. I think a lot of people imagine that the reason gifts are exchanged is because we're trying to make other people happy. So, if I give you a gift, I hope you have a joyous experience with it. And that's certainly part of the reason. But there are also very selfish reasons for giving a gift. One of them is about signaling who you are as a person and who you are as a gift giver, both to yourself and to everybody around. And so, signaling that you're a creative gift giver is important because if I think I am a creative person, then I want to reinforce that by making sure that I make choices that are creative, even at the expense of a recipient. And I want to make that signal, again, to myself, but also to other people around me because it's just part of my identity.

• 18:42Shankar Vedantam?

  So, you could argue that the height of, you know, uncreativity, if you will, is to give the same gift over and over again. I understand researchers have actually studied how givers and recipients think of such gifts. What did they find, Jeff?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, generally speaking, people don't like to do that, right? Because it minimizes the sense that they feel creative. So, if I give you a gift, I'm less likely to give the exact same gift to another friend because it's going to make it seem like I'm less creative.

• 19:07Shankar Vedantam?

  Or even to the same friend. I mean, you wouldn't give me the same gift next year.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Certainly right, even if it was a great gift, right? So, if I gave you a gift certificate to your favorite restaurant, I'm reluctant to do that again the next year, even though you'd probably really love that because there's a reason it's your favorite restaurant.

• 19:23Shankar Vedantam?

  So, one of the things I think this conversation is highlighting for me, Jeff, is how gift-giving can sometimes involve third parties, not just the giver and the recipient. And I'm thinking about settings where other people can see the gift that I have given, you know, maybe at a baby shower or at a wedding, for example. So, now, my audience is not just the recipient, but all the other people who are going to be watching and evaluating my gift, right?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And one of the consequences of that is not only are you trying to give a gift at that point that's beneficial to the recipient, but you want to make sure that you're not one-upped. So, an example of this in some of the work that I've done is if I give you a bottle of wine, a really well-liked bottle of wine, and it's going to make you happy, but another friend gave you two bottles of wine, I look terrible, right? I look like I'm a cheapskate because I didn't give you enough. And so, I'm very motivated to not be put in that position. And so, some of the work we've looked at says, you know, imagine if you had a scenario where you knew that this other person was going to give two bottles of wine. Would you spend more to, say, give three bottles of wine now? And people overwhelmingly say yes.

• 20:27Shankar Vedantam?

  So, you mentioned a second ago that one of the hidden motivations of gift giving is that it can serve as a means to acquire social approval or status. Do recipients attach the same store by expensive gifts as gift givers do?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Not nearly as much as you would think. So, one of the big findings in this literature is that, for example, the cost of a gift is not nearly as predictive in terms of happiness of the recipient as people tend to think. And so, that translates to the prestige of the gift, as well as, you know, the store that you're buying it from. People think, you know, the more you spend, the happier the person's going to be, and the evidence on that is very thin.

• 21:11Shankar Vedantam?

  Have you ever received a particularly expensive gift that made you, you know, either anxious about reciprocation or just sort of befuddled about why such an expensive gift was purchased?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  I've received expensive gifts. I'm very fortunate in that way, but they've always been in contexts where reciprocation was not obvious. And this speaks to some of the norms that exist in gift giving that are very nuanced. So, one thing that comes to mind is when my wife and I bought our new home, my parents actually bought us a retractable awning for our backyard, which is a really expensive gift. That's a multi-thousand-dollar gift. It's not something that you would normally get. There was no expectation that I would reciprocate that to my parents, in part because there's a norm that exists, which is that gifting down generations is very different than gifting up generations. And so, that was a wonderful gift. We use this all the time, especially in the summer. It provides a lot of shade, but there's really no expectation that I'm going to spend, you know, $10,000 on my parents.

• 22:10Shankar Vedantam?

  So we talked a second ago about how gift giving can be a form of status seeking. And one of these forms of status seeking can involve giving socially conscious gifts that highlight the giver's commitment to a virtuous cause, such as gifts to charity made in the recipient's name. I want to play you a clip from the TV show Home Economics in which a character named Sarah chides her brother Connor for not prominently displaying the gifts that she has given him in the past.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  So I was looking around and I didn't see those Tibetan sound bowls. The ones I got you last Christmas?

• 22:43Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, no, I never opened those.

• 22:45Speaker 04

  But it was a gift.

• 22:47Speaker 05

  You suck at gifts. You didn't know that?

• 22:49Speaker 04

  I've been trying to get her there.

• 22:51Speaker 05

  After you got me that novel about that girl in Peru who gets cancer?

• 22:53Speaker 04

  Fernanda's Miracle.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  And that bracelet made by genius women?

• 22:56Speaker 04

  Indigenous women, and it was an anklet.

• 22:58Speaker 05

  And you started tossing your gifts in the closet without unwrapping them.

• 23:02Speaker 05

  You never got me a puppy, did you?

• 23:05Speaker 05

  I think we're running low on shrimp.

• 23:06Shankar Vedantam?

  Jeff, what has research found about giving socially conscious presents?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  I'm reluctant to answer your question because I think socially conscious gifts are, for society, a wonderful thing. But the research is pretty clear on this, that recipients do not value them nearly as much as givers hope they would. So you could imagine scenarios where I might conceive of giving you a gift of value that, let's say, $100 value that is socially conscious, like a donation to a preferred charity or a material good that you would actually enjoy. And then the question is, are people enjoying those to the same degree? And the answer is firmly no. They would much prefer receiving something that will be useful to them than necessarily useful to society.

• 23:46Shankar Vedantam?

  Yeah. So in lots of ways, I think what we've seen is that gift givers can sometimes prioritize themselves in the gifts they give. So they want the recipient to be wowed, they want the gift to be better than other gifts, they want to show off their status and prestige. We haven't yet talked about the highest form of such selfishness, and here's a clip to demonstrate it from The Simpsons, in which Homer gives his wife Marge a bowling ball.

• 24:11Speaker 06

  Hold on, hold on now. Your mother hasn't opened my present yet.

• 24:19Speaker 06

  Beauty, isn't she? Well, it's hard for me to judge. Since I've never bowled in my life. Well, if you don't want it, I know someone who does.

• 24:29Shankar Vedantam?

  So the bowling ball is inscribed with Homer's name. And you know, we laugh, Jeff, but we laugh because I think we all know how selfishness can sometimes be embedded in acts of seeming generosity.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  I think that's exactly right. I mean, I love that clip. It's just a wonderful example of such a perfectly selfish gift. And people do this. Now, I don't think they do it necessarily to the extent that The Simpsons is portraying, but there are more subtle ways to do this. So for example, if I have a product and I'm considering giving you a similar product, but if let's say higher quality, a classic example might be I have an older version of an iPhone and I'm considering buying you a newer version of an iPhone. I'm reluctant to do that because I don't want your iPhone to be nicer than mine. Even though you might very well use that phone well, it might be something you'll enjoy a lot, I'm not going to do that. It's a selfish decision because I don't want you one-upping me.

• 25:24Shankar Vedantam?

  Gift giving is as old as humankind. But human nature being what it is, people aren't generous just because they are kind and caring. Generosity can sometimes be exercised in ways that are profoundly selfish.

• 25:40Shankar Vedantam?

  When we come back, techniques to be better and to give better gifts. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

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• 27:23Speaker 03

  What do I gift my mom and nieces? Walmart has top brands you know, like Ninja, Disneyland. Oh, Dad loves music. Sonos can bring his songs to life with sound that hits just right. And my coffee-obsessed bestie? Delongi Brews Coffee, right for morning's extra ride.

• 27:45Shankar Vedantam?

  All those great brands at Walmart? Who knew?

• 27:47Speaker 03

  We knew, now you do too.

• 27:49Shankar Vedantam?

  Shop gifts they'll love at Walmart.

• 27:58Shankar Vedantam?

  This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Gifts and gift exchanges are supposed to be about generosity, kindness, and caring. But below the surface of these pro-social goals lie complex psychological forces. Many gift givers, consciously or unconsciously, prioritize their own needs over the preferences of recipients. At Carnegie Mellon University, Jeff Galak studies the psychology of gift giving. He's found that in order to give good gifts, we need to get over ourselves. We need to start by really trying to see the world from the perspective of recipients.

• 28:38Shankar Vedantam?

  Jeff, there's something of a conundrum here. We've all been gift givers and we've all also been gift receivers as well. So we know what it's like to receive a bad gift or a gift that's principally designed to stroke the egos of gift givers. And yet, the moment we become gift givers, many of us forget the lessons that we have learned. Why do you think that happens?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  It's really difficult to learn, in large part because when we're in the role of a gift giver or the role of a gift recipient, we don't spontaneously choose to take the other perspective. This is a form of what we call focalism. We focus on the experience that we're in and we kind of neglect the alternative experience that might be out there, which would be the other perspective, the recipient or the giver. And so it's very hard to do that. And it's also a little bit disingenuous, I think, of me to just say, hey, everybody should be better because I have the luxury of running experiments. I can learn what good practices are because I have random assignment as an experimenter. I have the ability to observe multiple worlds, basically, simultaneously, the case where someone is a giver and the case that someone is a receiver.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  You and I, living in the real world as givers and receivers, we can't possibly have the opposite experience. If I give a gift, I cannot simultaneously operate as a recipient with all the same constraints around me. It's just not, it's impossible. And so, learning under that environment is very challenging because we're constantly being reinforced with whatever conceptions we have as a giver when we're in a giver state and the same when we're in a recipient state.

• 30:11Shankar Vedantam?

  I'm wondering how social norms might also exacerbate this problem, Jeff. When you received a tub of popcorn from your relative, the social norms told you, be polite, thank your relative. And so you thanked the relative and the relative presumably goes away thinking, boy, I came up with a really clever gift. Instead of you telling the relative the truth, which is, I have absolutely no idea why you gave this to me, is the constraints that we have in terms of the way we talk about gifts one of the reasons in some ways that we don't learn what recipients actually like?

• 30:42Speaker 01

  I think that's absolutely correct. Giving good feedback is a wonderful thing to do in many, many contexts. And there is a social taboo against giving proper feedback, meaning honest feedback, especially in the case where a gift fails. We're quick to tell somebody that we love their gifts, and that's great. We should reinforce those experiences. But we should also make sure that we tell people that the gift they gave is not ideal. The difficulty with that is that you're challenging a very established goal of gift giving, which is to make the other person happy. And if I now come back and I tell you, actually, you failed. You didn't make me happy.

• 31:17Shankar Vedantam?

  Right.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  I'm really potentially insulting you. And so we're very reluctant to do that as a society.

• 31:23Shankar Vedantam?

  Yeah. So your research has identified ways that we can get outside ourselves and perhaps get closer to what recipients are looking for. And perhaps the first insight is to scale back our impulse, to show that we can not only read the minds of gift recipients, but that we know things that they want that even they didn't know they wanted.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  You know, in a perfect world, I would be able to look into your brain and find out what you're looking for, what you would hope to receive, and then I execute on that. Of course, we don't live in that world, right? I can't do that. And so as soon as I realize that that's not possible, the next best thing is just to talk to you and understand what your preferences are and to avoid some of the mistakes that we make by mismatching between what it is you want and what it is I think you want. If we can do that, it's not quite mind reading, but it's as close, I think, as we can get.

• 32:17Shankar Vedantam?

  I remember we talked some time ago with psychologist Tessa West at NYU, and she studies, you know, how we read other people's minds. And her conclusion was really identical to yours, which is the best way to find out what's happening in someone else's mind is to ask them.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  I mean, I couldn't agree more. And I think, again, it speaks to the social norms that exist. We've built into our society, at least in our culture, this belief that if I ask you what you want, I've undermined the entire gift giving enterprise. And I think that's a just catastrophic mistake that we're making because all we're doing at that point is saying, I'm going to do my best to guess what you want. And more often than not, we get it wrong.

• 32:52Shankar Vedantam?

  And then you have the obligation to tell me you like it, regardless of whether you do or not.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  And then I'll never learn, and that's exactly right.

• 33:04Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that you and your wife have developed a method for acting on this research finding. What do you do, Jeff?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my wife is also a social scientist, and so we're really good about trying to implement some of these things when we can. And the way that we've set up gift giving in our family, at least between my wife and myself, is that we have a Google Doc sheet that we share between the two of us. And whenever one of us has a desire for an item of some sort that kind of exceeds a minimum expense, we put it on there as a potential gift that we would love to receive at some point. And what's nice about that is when it's time for me to fulfill my obligation to, say, give my wife a birthday present, I'm not racking my brain trying to figure out what one of a thousand possibilities would make her happy. She's already told me what's going to make her happy by having this list.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  And one of the nice benefits of the list beyond just knowing what she wants is it still maintains an element of surprise, except the surprise doesn't come in the form of the object, it comes in the form of the timing of the object itself. So she might know that she wants item X, but she's not going to know that I'm going to give it to her on that particular birthday. And so I get the benefit of being what appears to be a thoughtful gift giver, and I get to be a little bit surprising because she doesn't know when she's going to get it. And she gets something that she genuinely wants. So everybody wins in that context. And it's been working for us for 12 years now of our marriage, and we'll keep going as long as we can.

• 34:32Shankar Vedantam?

  Have you found that when you get a gift that you have put on this Google Doc, this shared Google Doc, that in some ways you're less enthused about it than if the gift was something that you hadn't thought about, that your wife somehow stumbled on by accident?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  No, quite the opposite. I'm always overjoyed when I get exactly what it is that I want. And maybe that's a function of my personality. I'm very particular when it comes to things. I want that model and that version with that feature set for whatever it is that I'm dealing with. And it would be ridiculous for me to expect anyone to know what those idiosyncratic preferences would be. And so I want to provide that to her. I want to be able to tell her, if you're going to get me something in this product category, that's the one I want, not the other options. They're going to make me unhappy because now I'm stuck with those, because I can't go and replace them with the one I actually want, because that would probably make my wife really upset if I did that.

• 35:22Shankar Vedantam?

  Yeah. Have you had a gift that you put on this sort of internal registry, I guess, that you really loved?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  So I would say the best gift that I've received in a long time is a gift that my wife gave me several years ago. I'm really into coffee and she gave me a pretty fancy espresso machine. And again, it hit every mark. It is something that I explicitly wanted. It was the exact model of the thing that I wanted. It's something that I use every single day, multiple times every day, in fact. It brings me a ton of joy because it makes great coffee. And on top of everything, every single time I use it, I am genuinely reminded of her and of the generosity that she had in giving me that gift. And so it is not in any way undermining the quality of the gift. It's doing the exact opposite.

• 36:12Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand there's also been research on the relative value of gifts that involve material things and gifts involving experiences. Tell me a little bit about this research, Jeff.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's been a fair bit of work in psychology generally, looking at the difference between experiences and material possessions, just outside of the world of gift giving. And what you tend to find in that work is that all else being equal, if you fix things on price, experiences tend to bring more joy to people. And that plays out exactly in gift giving as well. The challenge, though, is that gift givers don't understand and appreciate this. So gift givers prefer to give material possessions over experiences, again, all else being equal, but recipients prefer the opposite. And so there's this disconnect where you'd be much better off giving an experiential gift most of the time, and recipients would be much happier with that. But gift givers, again, just like the other examples, they fail to learn that this is something that's valuable.

• 37:07Shankar Vedantam?

  I wondered if this partly stems from the problem we discussed earlier, which is that givers really care about the wow factor in gifts. And so if you hand someone, you know, tickets to a concert, for example, the wow might come when the person goes to the concert, not at the point at which the tickets are given. Whereas if you give something that's, you know, really big, gaudy, you know, bauble that can be wrapped in lots of, lots of paper, then the wow factor is sort of much sharper at the point at which the gift is being given. Do you think that's connected?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  I think that's probably part of what's going on there. I think what you wind up finding in an experience is that two things can happen. One is the experience brings people closer together. But like you point out, that might be later on in time. So it doesn't really manifest in the moment. But then even when it's not bringing people together, like if I give you tickets to a show that I don't plan to go with you to, that still has more utility and more value for you. So yes, I agree completely. You're failing to put a smile on the person's face at the moment of exchange, but you're potentially providing a very valuable experience down the road.

• 38:15Shankar Vedantam?

  Have you put this advice to life in your own life? Do you tend to give more experiential gifts now?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Almost exclusively. Yeah, I mean, with the exception of my kids, who just want more toys. I almost exclusively do gifts. So my wife, her and I, our anniversary is coming up and we collectively decided that rather than exchange material gifts, we're going to take a day off of work and spend the day at a nice spa, getting massages and then have a really nice dinner afterwards. And both of us cannot wait to do that. There's no reservation about not receiving something physical or tangible. We really prefer that and I try to live that as much as I can.

• 38:50Shankar Vedantam?

  Have you tried to communicate to other people, you know, like your parents, that you actually prefer, you know, experiential gifts rather than material gifts?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Very much so. So my parents were a tough nut to crack. They like giving material possessions, but eventually I've convinced them. And the best gift that they continuously give me is the gift of babysitting. So my parents don't live in the same city as us. They'll, they come in every once in a while to see their grandkids. And they've now been offering more than anything else as a gift for a birthday or something else to watch the kids for a couple of days to let me and my wife go off and travel somewhere. And that's, there's really nothing better that I could possibly have that would be a possession than that gift. So I'm so grateful for it.

• 39:34Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that givers often avoid presents that have sentimental value because these presents seem less impressive than something that costs a lot of money. How do sentimental gifts sit with recipients, Jeff?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so sentimental gifts are gifts that recipients love to have. Because again, if you think about what the function of a gift could be, it is to bring people together. And a gift that has sentimental value, so imagine a photograph of a time that you've spent with a friend, or even something as rudimentary as a token, like a shell that you picked up on a beach after walking with somebody down it as a gift. They have very little material value, right, from a dollar perspective, but they're so special and they act as such a reminder of the relationship that they're very valuable to recipients. Unfortunately, much like some of these other examples, gift givers get that wrong. And part of that is gift givers tend to be risk averse when they give gifts.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  And so if I know for a fact that if I get you a jersey from a football player that you're a big fan of, I know you're going to like that. And so I'm more likely to give you that low-risk gift than the high-risk sentimental gift where I'm just not sure if that's going to be enjoyable, even though what we find in research is that those sentimental gifts are very, very well received, often much more so than the sure thing.

• 40:50Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand you once took a trip to Antarctica with your wife and she gave you a wonderful gift afterwards. Tell me about it, Jeff.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  So this was our baby moon, I think people call it. This is the last big trip that we took before we had our first child. And upon returning, I had no expectation of this at all, but she got me this beautiful poster, which was handcrafted by an artisan, that says, "I love you from here to Antarctica." And the lettering is made up of all the places that we visited on that trip. And so the trip was, you know, it's a trip of a lifetime. It's an absolutely incredible trip to go on. And it's made all the more special that I shared it with my wife. And now I have this amazing memento that I look at. It's hanging up very prominently in our home. And every time I pass it and I notice it, it's a reminder of that wonderful experience and the relationship that I have with her. So the cost of that was probably very low.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  I mean, I had to imagine it was $50 or so. But the meaningfulness of it is off the charts.

• 41:48Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that you have also reciprocated and given your wife sentimental gifts.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So one that comes to mind is when our daughter was born, it was our first child, I had an artisan craft a necklace with three pendants on it, and each pendant had one of our names on it. So it was kind of to signify our family. And again, it wasn't the most valuable gift from a monetary perspective, but my wife really cherished it. And then when our son was born a few years later, I had the same artisan craft, a fourth pendant with his name on it. And so now she has this necklace commemorating our family. And I know that she loves that necklace quite a bit. And again, it's not because it's got, you know, fancy diamonds or rubies in it or anything like that, far from it. It's a pretty plain necklace, but the sentiment is so very strong.

• 42:37Shankar Vedantam?

  One of the important conventions in gift giving is that we often give gifts on important occasions, birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's Day. Tell me what research has found about breaking those conventions and giving gifts at other times of the year.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is probably my all time favorite and largest recommendation that I can give to anyone listening to this program, which is that if you're going to give a gift, do it, what I like to say, on a random Tuesday. The value that people get when they receive gifts on non-occasions, so not your birthday, not Christmas, not some other holiday, that value is so much higher on a random Tuesday. And that is because they have no expectations. On a birthday, you know that the people around you are probably going to get you gifts. And so your expectations are actually reasonably high for the quality of that gift to meet or exceed those expectations. But on a random Tuesday, you're just going through your

• 43:33Speaker 01

  day, enjoying your life. There's no expectation of anything. And so if someone who cares about you gives you a gift, even a very low value one, from a monetary perspective, you beam, right? And you could imagine, it's not that hard to think about examples of this, right? Receiving flowers on a birthday is great. Receiving flowers on a Valentine's Day, that's great too. But receiving flowers from a partner on a random Tuesday, that's amazing, right? Opportunity to show that person you care about them, not just when you're supposed to care about them, on the days we've been told to care, but all the time. And so we find that the utility and the value that receivers get on these non-occasion gifts is just much, much higher than it is for gifts that they receive for special occasions.

• 44:22Shankar Vedantam?

  I suppose that one of the implications of this is that when you have an impulse of generosity towards someone, instead of saying, you know, oh, this is a good idea, I'm going to save it for their next birthday, is just to give them the gift right away.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  I think that's exactly right. Now, I think there are probably constraints around that. Some things are just not financially feasible, but that's the beauty of these non-occasion gifts. It does not take a lot of money to make somebody happy, because again, their expectations at that moment are zero. And so even a token gift worth a few dollars can mean a tremendous amount, and often even more than a comparably expensive gift on an occasion.

• 45:00Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that you yourself were given an unexpected gift by a running buddy. Tell me that story, Jeff.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Friendships, new friendships, when you're an adult are difficult. I'm sure I'm not the only person who thinks that. And so when you find somebody who you connect with, I think it's really important to foster that relationship. And I don't think I realized that quite as much until this particular friend. I was socializing with him at an event that had nothing to do with my birthday. I don't like to make a big deal out of that. And he learned spontaneously that it happened to be my birthday. And he gave me a survival axe.

• 45:33Shankar Vedantam?

  What is a survival axe?

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Imagine like a hand axe, but you could unscrew the bottom, and it has a compass in it and some paracord, and you can convert it into a shovel. And it's the kind of thing where if you were stuck in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, I guess you could survive with it. I mean, I mean, he knows I'm an outdoorsy person. He knows I enjoy camping, so I guess it's not completely out of context there. But I had no expectation of anything. And so he gave me this gift, I think in part because he cared about me, and that's great, but in part probably strategically, because it is a way to in fact create Connection with somebody. And again, the reason that gift landed so well with me at least is because I didn't expect it. If this was a birthday party that I had invited him to, I would expect him to have a gift perhaps,

• 46:19Speaker 01

  right, as many birthday parties do. But this was just a random day that happened to be my birthday. And so he did that, I think, out of genuine generosity and genuine care for the relationship.

• 46:30Shankar Vedantam?

  So in many ways, Jeff, I think what I'm hearing is that being a good gift giver really means putting yourself second and putting the recipient first. And perhaps the ultimate form of selfless gift giving is the anonymous gift. I understand that you've been part of a rather unusual gift exchange for a number of years now. Can you tell me about it, Jeff?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  So the website Reddit, which is a popular social media platform, had for years now something called the Reddit Gift Exchange. And it started with an exchange around Christmas. This was the Secret Santa Gift Exchange. And it was quite an impressive feat. So at the height of it, I think they had millions of people logging into this platform, committing to give a gift to a random stranger who they didn't know much about for the holidays. And they would also then expect to receive a gift, though not from the same person. And it's usually done with very minimal information. There's a form that people fill out about their preferences and their desires. And I might tell you my age and my gender and maybe some of my hobbies and things of that sort. And there's also an expectation set about the expense that people should undertake.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  So if I remember correctly, the suggested spending amount was about $20 plus shipping. And it was wonderful. I did it for years. I never received a truly amazing gift, to be perfectly honest. They were all fairly mundane, but it was still really fun because it's this moment where a random stranger from somewhere else in the world is sending me something for no reason at all. There's no expectation of reciprocity. There's no expectation that I'll ever even really thank them, other than in some anonymous fashion.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  And then they still continue giving the next year. I just think that's wonderful, right? I mean, people really aren't doing this out of obligation. They're doing this because it's just a nice thing to do around the holidays.

• 48:19Shankar Vedantam?

  I understand that you're a fan of the O. Henry short story, The Gift of the Magi.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:24Shankar Vedantam?

  How does that story speak to your work, Jeff?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  So the story, put very simply, is that a husband and wife, who don't have a lot of wealth, are looking to give one another a holiday gift around the Christmas time. And what we know in the story is that the husband really loves his watch and the wife really loves her hair. And so in thinking about what gift to give to one another, the wife winds up cutting off her hair to sell it so that she can get a chain for her husband's watch, while the husband actually sells the watch to get a comb or a brush for the wife. And so the irony there, of course, is that neither one of them can use the gifts they gave, but it was truly a selfless decision to give away their prized possession so that their partner can actually have something valuable. And I think it's a wonderful sentiment. It speaks to a lot of people.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  But I think the major problem with that story is that the whole thing could have been avoided had they just talked to one another. If they had... That's it.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  In all seriousness, right? If the wife had asked the husband what he was hoping to receive and the husband had asked the wife the same, they wouldn't have been in a position of having two useless items at the end of this and losing their most precious possessions. And so this really speaks to a recommendation that I always give, which is just ask, right? If you just talk to another human being and ask them what it is that might make them happy in terms of a gift context, you're just almost always better off.

• 49:55Shankar Vedantam?

  Jeff Galak is a marketing researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. Jeff, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  It was my pleasure.

• 50:15Shankar Vedantam?

  Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. If you're looking for a holiday gift for a fellow Hidden Brain fan in your life, we have two ideas to share with you. You can now give a gift subscription to Hidden Brain Plus. Just follow the link we've included in the show notes for today's episode. Or if material gifts are more your style, per our chat with Jeff Galak, go to shop.hiddenbrain.org to find Hidden Brain t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and more.

• 50:59Shankar Vedantam?

  That site again is shop.hiddenbrain.org. From all of us at Hidden Brain, happy holidays, and we really appreciate your support. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.

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