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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.”
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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?
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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
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
