Giving, Getting, and Grey Matter

I give you the Griswold family Christmas tree. Did you see

Rusty there? That’s Leonard from The Big Bang Theory! He

also starred in the one other big budget 1989 Christmas

movie, Prancer. By the way, did you notice that in this

Griswold movie Rusty went from being Audrey’s older brother

to her younger brother.

The Jelly of the Month Club – the gift that keeps on giving. It’s that time of year again, time to feel the love or the loathe, battle the mall or e-tail ‘til you drop. Everyone likes to get gifts, but it seems our brains like giving them more.

Your kids make gifts for you just as you made gifts for your parents. Why, because kids don’t have any money (or maybe they do, more on that below).  You loved it when Ma or Pa unwrapped your macaroni necklace or the intricate drawing of the spaceman being eaten by the dragon.

The reason you thought your gift to them was so great can be explained by how your brain works. Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist, wrote about this is his book, The Upside of Irrationality. People value their own work more than they value other people’s work.

His example in the book had to do with building Lego toys – people would bid more to buy their own products than they would to buy the same products made by others. So the macaroni necklace from you was really a Tiffany original and your drawing put Renoir to shame.

And your parents loved your homemade gifts just as much as you love those from your kids. Why? Because your brain makes you….. er, allows you to. Receiving a gift activates the reward center of your brain. What's more, giving something away feels the same as when you receive something special, your brain doesn’t know the difference.

Research shows that giving a gift activates the same reward centers in the brain that light up when you receive a gift. Giving is a pleasure for the giver just as much as it is a pleasure for the receiver. This is why some Scrooges complain that people give to charity to make themselves feel good, not those they are helping.

If we covered the hands and present, could you tell who was

giving the gift and who was receiving it? Giving and getting

stimulate the same responses in the brain. However, women

are better at picking out gifts and men are better at

accepting gifts they don’t like.

Gift giving might even be more self-serving. In addition to the reward center activation, a 2006 study showed that gift giving activates the part of the brain involved in social connections and altruism. This part of the brain is activated when the gift is of greater benefit to the receiver than to the giver and is a true mark of giving in the best sense.

On the other hand, studies say getting a bad gift can actually harm a relationship. Men that received a gift from their significant other that did not match their known preferences or interests reported having less of a connection to the giver because of the choice. So the key is to pick out a gift that tells the receiver that you know them, you listen to them and you consider their perspective.

Popular theory has it that women are better at selecting gifts for other people than are men. That ain’t so at my house, but don’t tell my wife I said so. I think that women are better in general because they have more practice. They buy gifts all the time; little I’m thinking of you gifts, thank you for your gift gifts, thank you for your thank gift gifts.

That’s my hypothesis, but a scientific group in the Netherlands refused to take my word for it and did a series of experiments. They had men and women rank a series of possible gifts for people they knew and then had the potential recipient rank the gifts as well. Women did better at predicting the recipients’ preferences.

Another experiment in this study sought to determine why women were better. There results suggested that women were more connected with the meaning of the gift to the recipient. In short, women pick better gifts because they think more about the things they give.

Pearl is Mr. Crabs’ daughter and boy is she spoiled. Research

shows that giving kids too many gifts makes them unable to

discern needs from wants and puts pressure on them because

they know deep down that they don’t deserve them all. Now

explain to me why Mr. Crabs’ daughter is a whale!

So the quality of a gift can lead to stronger relationship and feelings of reward for both the giver and the receiver. But beware the power of gifts – you can have too much of a good thing.

Parents that overindulge their children through the giving of too many gifts can do harm. They don’t mean to, quite the opposite. They want to make their kids happy – it’s their job.

However, studies show that too many gifts cause insecurity and anxiety in kids. They can’t react strongly to too many gifts. So they pick one as a coping mechanism – and then they worry that they will offend the givers of the others.

In addition, giving your kids too much (material overindulgence) may lead to problems later in life with responsibility, delaying gratification, and in knowing what is normal.

Dr. David Bredehoft, the preeminent expert in the field warns that overindulgence leads to, “not knowing the difference between needs and wants; needing constant stimulation and entertainment from others; not taking responsibility for their own actions; overeating, overspending, and dysfunctional thinking (increased depressive thoughts). Paradoxically, overindulged children can develop an overblown sense of self-importance which can lead to problems at school, on the job, and/or in relationships.”

The problem continues as the overindulged become parents, “the more children are overindulged the more likely they are to become parents who: feel ineffective; believe they are not in control of their own life or their child’s behavior; think they are not responsible for their child’s actions, and that raising good children is due to fate, luck, or chance.”

This ad shows the brain at work. They tell you that you have to

add the eggs and that this creates “that homemade goodness.”

Do you think that change would be necessary today?

We can sum up gift giving for the kids through another lesson from behavioral economist Dan Ariely in The Upside of Irrationality. In the 1950’s, instant pie crust and instant cake mixes were introduced at the same time. They had pretty much the same ingredients, but the pie crust mix was a hit while they couldn’t give the cake mix away. It turned out that to make a pie, you had to add things to the crust, but the cake mix was the complete product in and of itself. Housewives had no pride in a cake they made from mix because they felt they hadn’t worked for it – they hadn’t earned it.

When manufacturers removed the powdered egg and oil from the cake mix, women started to buy it. They had to add something to create the cake. They took pride in serving it to their family or giving it away because they felt they earned it. It didn’t take much, but some work needed to be involved.

The moral - people value things they earn more than things they are given. The same is true for gift giving and receiving. If you have worked to make sure the gift you are giving is the product of your hard work, thought, and planning, you feel better about that gift. Likewise, if you have some sort of feeling that you deserve a gift and that it holds some meaning, then you will appreciate the gift more.

Too much given too easily lessens the specialness of the holiday season.

Contributed by Mark E. Lasbury, MS, MSEd, PhD

As Many Exceptions As Rules

Pollmann, M., & van Beest, I. (2013). Women Are Better at Selecting Gifts than Men PLoS ONE, 8 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0081643

Dunn, E., Huntsinger, J., Lun, J., & Sinclair, S. (2008). The Gift of Similarity: How Good and Bad Gifts Influence Relationships Social Cognition, 26 (4), 469-481 DOI: 10.1521/soco.2008.26.4.469

Moll, J., Krueger, F., Zahn, R., Pardini, M., de Oliveira-Souza, R., & Grafman, J. (2006). Human fronto-mesolimbic networks guide decisions about charitable donation Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103 (42), 15623-15628 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0604475103

O Christmas Tree: It’s Not Easy Being Green

Evergreens are a remarkable mainstay in the evolution of plants. Evidence suggests that they have existed more or less in their present form for the past 300 million years. In other words, the evergreens are so resilient and exquisitely adapted to their environment that nature has not tweaked with their genetic recipe since the Permian. The evergreens can survive just about anything nature can throw at them, except humans. Nearly 40 million of these stoic conifers are chopped down each Christmas season in North America alone.

"Christmas Tree" farms cultivate a variety of evergreens that will grace one of 40 million homes each season. This makes it a lot easier than hiking into the forest to cut one down yourself.

Humans have long been fascinated by the evergreens because these trees and shrubs do not lose their leaves (needles) in autumn like the broadleaf trees. Seemingly in defiance to the harsh winter, the aptly named evergreens stay full and green all year long. Impressed with this act of endurance, early humans thought that evergreens must hold special powers. The ancient Pagans would place evergreen branches over their doors and windows to ward off evil spirits, especially during the winter solstice when the days were at their shortest and the nights at their coldest. Evergreens served as a reminder that the days would lengthen and the crops would grow once again in the spring.

A decorated evergreen is now synonymous with “Christmas Tree”, but this ritual has its “roots” in Paganism. Interestingly, it has even been argued that this passage from the Bible forbids emulating this Pagan practice.

So how do evergreens stay green year round? In winter, shorter days mean less sunlight. As sunlight is required for photosynthesis, plants face a dramatic reduction in energy during winter. To cope with this, broadleaf plants stop making chlorophyll, the molecule that drives photosynthesis and reflects green light. Consequently, the leaves change color and eventually fall off as the tree goes dormant.

By way of comparison, evergreen “leaves” do not have a lot of surface area; they are more resistant to lower temperatures and decreased moisture. Chlorophyll in these needle-like leaves is retained and photosynthesis can still generate energy from light, albeit at a much slower rate than spring or summer.

In addition to keeping chlorophyll, retaining moisture is equally important:  trees cannot extract water from frozen ground, and occasional sunlight in the winter can draw out precious moisture. Evergreen needles have a thick coating of wax and a slender shape, characteristics that help them hold water in and prevent evaporation, respectively.

A recent study has shown that the conifer’s ability to survive arid times involves the coordinated evolution of tissues regulating water supply (xylem) and water loss (stomatal pores) in the needle leaves. A plant hormone called abscisic acid helps keep the leaf’s pores sealed when water isn’t available. Another mechanism allows leaves to dehydrate and resist damage via a water transport system.

Close up image of pine needle – the small pores are stomata, which open and close to regulate gas exchange. When open, water vapor can escape.

Conifers have thousands of needle leaves, which help maximize energy production while not losing water to dehydration. Of course, evergreen needles do not last forever. They do need to be replaced, but conifers do this intermittently and a green appearance is always observed.

Ever since ancient times, the evergreens have been admired for their stamina and hardiness through the winter. They are a source of inspiration reminding us that better times are ahead. In this light, the ritual chopping down of the tree for decoration seems a most bizarre way to honor the mighty evergreen. Consider, instead, a Festivus Pole.
 

Contributed by:  Bill Sullivan

Follow Bill on Twitter.

Brodribb TJ, McAdam SA, Jordan GJ, & Martins SC (2014). Conifer species adapt to low-rainfall climates by following one of two divergent pathways. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111 (40), 14489-93 PMID: 25246559