Gift Giving: Should Your Gift Reflect You or the Recipient?

Until I read this study, “Give a piece of you: Gifts that reflect givers promote closeness,” I thought it was better to give a gift that mirrored the recipient’s preferences.  For example, for years, I gave anything, and everything related to butterflies to a friend who was taken with them.  At first, she seemed enthusiastic about receiving them.

But, later, not so much.  Of course, the novelty of a butterfly related gift from me must have worn off after a couple of years.  She knew what to expect and thereby the surprise and dare I say, joy, at receiving my gift diminished.  That meant both of us felt a bit deflated.

Now, I learn that it wasn’t just the lack of novelty of my butterfly gift over successive years that was wearing off.  It was also that my gift to her did not reflect me.

Lara B. Aknin and Lauren J. Human published their paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that brought my attention to this concept. In it, they investigated the perceptions and relational outcomes of gifts in six studies.  Although  they found a strong and consistent predilection for giving and receiving recipient-centric gifts what was unexpected was that the feeling of closeness engendered in the gift partner was more intense when the gift reflected the giver rather than the recipient.

In the words of the authors, “…giving a gift that reflects the giver’s true self led both givers and receivers to feel closer to one another…offering giver-centric gifts are associated with greater feelings of self-other overlap with the recipient…”

So, this year, instead of giving that butterfly purse to my friend, I’m branching out with a gift that reflects me, socks with teapots on them.  Why?  Among the porcelains in my collection, teapots are the most prevalent.  My friends know this and associate them with me.  By giving a gift that reflects me, according to Aknin and Human, we both will feel closer, a worthy goal for any gift giver.

In addition, I’m breaking the monotony of giving the same kind of gift every year. by choosing something different, a novelty of sorts.  I referred to this psychological phenomenon in “Collecting: An Urge That’s Hard to Resist,” my first column for Psychology Today.  As a recap, brain centers technically called the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area (SN/VTA) respond to the new with stimulation of dopaminergic neurons, which are part of the reward system.

As Nico Bunzeck and Emrah Düzel say in their paper, Absolute Coding of Stimulus Novelty in the Human Substantia Nigra/VTA, “Novelty stimulates our brains because we are looking for rewards. When we see something new, we don’t know whether it will give us a reward or not, but it interests us until we find out.”

So, by giving socks with teapots on them (which reminds my friend of my interest) she is also surprised that the gift isn’t butterfly related yet once again.  This almost certainly will stimulate her novelty center because it is a different kind of gift and provide double pleasure because it represents me as well.