A new study has provided a deeper insight into the various aspect of gift-giving and receiving, like how people choose gifts, how they are used by receivers, and how the gestures impact the relationship between givers and receivers.
'The Psychology of Gift giving and Receiving' symposia delve on the above mentioned factors to discover how human brain thinks while giving and receiving gifts.
Researchers found that of the shoppers surveyed, 39 percent of the items they purchased were for individuals they considered "picky." While most of us may shop for a picky person in our lives, we know very little about how people cope with the challenge of shopping for a picky person.
According to the research, there was an upside to being picky: shoppers are more likely to purchase an item the picky recipient specifically requests. Less picky people have a higher chance of receiving items they don't want, whereas picky recipients more often get what they want.
Lead researcher Chelsea Helion explained that while gift cards technically could be used to buy mundane things like textbooks or paper towels, they found that this feels like a misuse of the card because when paying with a gift card, people forgo buying everyday items in favor of buying indulgent items.
Recipients use gift cards to "treat" themselves to items they might not normally buy because individuals experience less guilt when paying with a gift card, compared to credit cards or cash, she further added.
According to new research by Mary Steffel, Elanor Williams and Robyn LeBoeuf, gift-givers tend to choose gifts that are personalized to the recipient, but are less versatile than what the recipient would like to receive.
This mismatch arises because givers tend to focus on recipients' stable traits rather than recipients' multiple, varying wants and needs.
To give a gift that would be more likely to match a recipient's preferences, the researchers recommended that givers focus more on what the recipient would like, rather than focusing on their unique traits.
Researchers Cindy Chan said that giving an experience would make friends, spouse, or family member feel special than material gifts.
Experiments examining actual and hypothetical gift exchanges in real-life relationships reveal that experiential gifts produce greater improvements in relationship strength than material gifts, regardless of whether the gift was consumed together.
The relationship improvements that recipients derive from experiential gifts stem from the emotion that was evoked when the gifts are consumed, not when the gifts are received. Giving experiential gifts was thus identified as a highly effective form of prosocial spending, and could have a greater impact on improving the relationship between the giver and receiver.