Science reveals the secret to giving a perfect gift

The festive season is a period of both giving and returning gifts. US consumers are set to spend about $960 billion during this holiday period, as per National Retail Federation findings. However, retailers are preparing for the fact that roughly 20% of these purchases are expected to be returned.

Julian Givi, a psychologist and marketing expert who has studied gifting habits and their mishaps for about a decade, suggests these high return rates are likely due, at least in part, to gift-givers often making incorrect choices when selecting gifts. Givi initially presumed gift-givers were primarily driven by the aim of pleasing their recipients. However, his research soon showed that gift-givers are more frequently motivated by personal desires like seeking societal approval, the pursuit of uniqueness, or the thrill of a joke gift, and not as much by the recipients' needs or wants.

In other words, Givi, a researcher at West Virginia University in Morgantown, suggests that individuals could greatly improve their gift-giving skills if they were to set aside their personal preferences. This argument is based on a comprehensive review of gift-giving research Givi conducted together with his colleagues, and it was published in the July Journal of Consumer Psychology.

The act of giving exemplary gifts may seem a trivial subject to research. Nevertheless, the act of exchanging worthwhile gifts can not only assist businesses in handling extensive returns but it can also reinforce social bonds. More critically, by giving better, more thoughtful gifts, we could alleviate pressure on the environment. For instance, estimates show that in 2020, roughly 2.6 million tons of returned goods in the US ended up in landfills.

In an interview, Science News discusses with Givi on the topic of gift-giving research and draws advice for last-minute holiday shoppers on how to avoid common gift-giving errors. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

For example, gift-givers often go wrong due to societal norms, says Givi, illustrating this with how givers tend to overemphasize certain traditions. People don't usually prefer to give used items as gifts, but if that’s what the recipient wants, it should be appropriate. Givi provides another instance about extravagantly wrapping a gift. He says the extra dollars are better put into the gift rather than its wrapping, but societal norms dictate otherwise.

However, breaking societal norms seems to work in favor of experiential gifts, according to Givi. Research, he says, shows that people don’t often give experiential gifts, though they usually make recipients happier than material gifts.

Givi emphasizes that gift-givers should avoid the temptation to gift a novelty item, such as a chocolate fondue fountain, as these often provide short-term excitement but are rarely used in the long run.

During his research, Givi notes that most of these studies were conducted in the US or the UK, and he points out that cultural norms often override the specific results of his studies.

For instance, we oftentimes give superficial gifts around the holidays. But what we find is that recipients actually prefer sentimental gifts more than what givers anticipate. Part of the reason this mismatch occurs is because superficial gifts are a pretty safe bet. I live in Pittsburgh, for example. If I give someone a Steelers jersey, I know that they are going to appreciate it to some extent. If I give someone a scrapbook for photographs of the two of us, it could be great or it could be weird.

But if in a culture if you are going to get ridiculed for giving a sentimental gift, then I would say don’t give a sentimental gift.

Another limitation on this body of work is that it’s focused on adults. It’s a lot easier to get [institutional review board] approval to do research on people who are 18 and older.

SN: What about times when you know the recipient wants that new, non-sentimental and non-experiential gift under the tree?

Givi: We are studying at the population level, or on average what gift givers should do versus not do. But there are individual differences. Even if on average this research is saying givers should go with the used thing, if the giver knows they are dealing with someone who would very much not appreciate used things, it’s certainly fine to go against what the research is telling you.

SN: How should gift givers handle picky or difficult recipients?

Givi: I don’t have an answer for you when it comes to very difficult people. My understanding of that research is that researchers have examined how givers behave when they are dealing with difficult recipients. But they don’t necessarily get the recipients’ perspective. It would probably be hard to get a bunch of difficult people to participate in a study.

But here’s something you could potentially do with a difficult recipient. One of my papers shows that it’s a lot easier to make people happy when you’re giving in the absence of a special occasion. What we find in the paper is you can spend $10 on a random Tuesday in March giving a person a gift versus $50 on Christmas for gifts, and that generates similar levels of happiness.

What you could do with difficult people is sprinkle gifts throughout the year.