What to get...

No one wants their gift returned.

I mean, you have to be realistic, your gift might not become their favorite thing in the world.

But if your gift is returned you’ve done worse than just getting them a gift card.

They have to find where the gift came from, get credit or cash from the store, and then pick their own gift.

At least with a gift card they don’t have to go through the hassle of returning the original.

Despite that the most commonly given gift in America is also the most likely to be returned.

Commonly Given, More Commonly Returned

You may have already guessed what it is (I need to stop giving my secrets away in the pictures) but I’m talking about clothes.  1 in 4 gifts are gifts of clothing in America – but those gifts are the most likely to be returned.  In fact, they are almost the only type of gift to be returned (85% plus of returned gifts are clothes).

The reasons are obvious – some clothes literally don’t fit.  But what does this say about how we give gifts.

Besides asking if the recipient wants the offered gift, the gift giver couldn’t be bothered (wasn’t comfortable) asking if the given gift would even work.

Is there a better example of how important it is to ask your giftee what they want before giving them a gift?

Other Reasons That Clothes Are Returned

Of course, simple fit is not the only reason that clothes are returned.

As the psychologists who found this fact note: because there is a socially acceptable reason to return clothes (sizing) it is much easier to return clothes that we don’t like.

A book that the giftee doesn’t like is likely to just hang around on her bookshelf without getting read – but since she doesn’t have to feel bad when returning clothes she does.  Many gifts that aren’t returned are likely kept because the giftee would feel awkward returning a gift.

So what have we learned from this lesson today class?  Oh, yes, ask first. Especially when giving something like clothes that have to fit not only her style but also her figure.

Click here to read the article about how important it is to ask the giftee for ideas before buying a gift or you can go to the advanced class and read our article about sneaky ways to get ideas without being obvious.

You don’t know your significant other (S.O.) as well as you think you do.

It’s not your fault, no one does.

We can spend a lifetime pursuing them and yet there will always be more to know of each other, more to discover.

That’s what keeps it fun, I think.

But as charming as mystery is for romance it makes gift-selection difficult.

Will she like this ring?  Will he appreciate the card I made?  The mystery of the sexes comes to the fore when picking out a gift for out S.O.  - gifts are sometimes powerful signals in a courtship and it’s never easy to understand how they will be interpreted.

Fortunately the difference between men and women giving gifts in a relationship has been studied by psychologists and they’ve come to a few surprising insights.  Read on to find out more.

How Men View Gifts (For Women)

We’ll start with the bad news.

Men on average (everyone is different so I’m talking about the average findings from the study throughout the article) appreciate how much a gift cost.  More often than they said that they judged a gift based on whether they wanted it or not, even, which seems counter-intuitive.

But the study was looking at gift-giving in the context of a romantic relationship, which gives some context to the finding.

For men the price tag of the gift was a signal from their partner about how committed (s)he was to the relationship (the study looked at both straight and gay couples – the finding were the same for men of either persuasion).  Thoughtfulness and appropriateness and such were nice, but  wasn’t viewed as highly.

This can be hard for women to accept.  I know because I get many more women looking for things like ‘creative’ or ‘unique’ gifts here on DuckDuckGift than I do men.

You know (or will know soon) how true this is of your man, but if you are looking for one tip for picking out at gift for your boyfriend here it is: Within a given budget buy him something expensive on sale.

How women view gifts (for men)

For men the problem seems to be a little less straightforward than it is for women.

The most frequent thing that women said they looked for in a gift was whether they liked it or not.  That seems to be a bit of a catch-22 at first: the gift that she likes is the gift that she likes.

In light of other things we know about gifts (get them what they want and the gift effect) you can see a little more of what the psychologists were trying to measure.  The same thing might be described as how well-chosen a gift was: how much it was in line with what they wanted you to get.

It still sounds a little circular to me so what does it mean in practice?  Simple: Buy her something that she wants.  There is an easy way to do this: ask her.

You may feel like it is ‘giving up’ to come straight out and ask what she wants to consider what you are offering instead of a surprise.

You are offering to have a conversation about her desires.  You are offering to listen to what she says and remember long enough to take action.  That process in itself becomes part of your gift and sends the right signals about your commitment to the relationship.

How can we get along?

So men and women are looking for different things in a gift? What’s the point in trying to pick one out then?

The upsides are several.  Giving a gift is both satisfying for you and makes your partner like you better.  The differences between men and women are not so large as they might appear, either.  Men may look first at the price tag and women at their wish list when they get a gift but the motivation seems to be the same for both.

Gifts are a signal of commitment to the relationship.   How that signal is interpreted differs between men and women, but it’s the commitment that we are all looking for.  An expensive gift shows that we are in the relationship for the long haul and a well-chosen gift shows that we are emotionally invested.

Eventually you will learn so much about your S.O. that you can do both.

Realize that as much as they are biased you probably are too, be forgiving, be excellent to one another

Confident, yes, but should he be?

You know everything except what you need to know about your SO.

You know how he walks, how he talks, how he likes his steak and how he likes to park his car.

You may have been together for two months or twenty years so surely you know enough about him to pick out a gift he’ll like right?

Well.  No. There’s a catch.

In another one of those pesky studies that undermine what we think we know about ourselves psychologist looked at how much couples knew about each other.

They found that the longer couples have been together the more confident they were that they knew how their partners ticked.  They also found, though, no evidence that the couples actually knew each other better.

What Do We Know About Our Partners?

When tested couples didn’t know how factual information about the other partner or how the other felt about themselves.

So what is it that we learn about each other in the course of a relationship?

The psychologists suggest that we learn about our partners in a broad way rather than deeply.  They call this ‘richness’ – knowing a wide variety of things about them and drawing upon many different sources.

You don’t continue to ask him what his favorite food is, because you already asked that question six months ago.  You talk about different things and about nothing and so you learn more about him, but you don’t necessarily make your first impressions more accurate.

Confidence Does increase with time

Think about how your parents know you.  Your parents are confident that they know you (don’t believe me?  Ask them, you might be shocked) but how accurate is their knowledge about you right now?

They know more odd stories about your history and where you came from than you do – they definitely know more about you, so they feel confident that they know you.

Remember that.  It feels like we know more deeply with time, but usually we know more about. (As an aside I’d like to know how we can get to know each other more deeply.  I haven’t come across that one yet)

We confuse the two types of knowledge by default, but we shouldn’t let ourselves get more confident without more real knowledge.

What Does This Have to Do With Gifts?

I’ll admit that this is a bit of a stretch for DuckDuckGift but bear with me.  I was interested when I cam across the paper I linked to because it seems to explain a mystery that I’ve thought over:  why am I not better at picking better gifts for my wife?

I am motivated (I write a blog about gifts… and she knows that) and I pay attention and put the effort in, but after four years of marriage I don’t think I’m any better at it than I was at the beginning.

I have a little bit of an advantage just because we talk a lot so I can fish for ideas, but each one is work.  Shouldn’t it get easier as I get to know my wife better?

Well. No.  Apparently not.

So if you are in a relationship and you are stressing because you can’t find the perfect gift for him relax.  There’s no reason why you should be able to find the perfect gift for him.

Like with any gift you will need to fish for ideas or come right out and ask for gift wishes like you would  when picking gifts for anyone else.  Give yourself permission to be less than omniscient.

It’ll be less stress for you and you will probably pick a gift that he will like more too.

credit: Jane Rahman

Let me tell you about the gift that got my wife to marry me.

It wasn’t the ring.

The ring comes way too late in the process to be persuasive, or at least it did with us.

Instead I sent her an extremely persuasive box of homemade baklava. Read on to find out about the unspoken rules of dating gifts that I followed by accident and learn how they work yourself.

Nothing Says Romance Like Butter and Nuts

I met my girlfriend on the 4^th of January and we only decided to start dating around the 20^th.  Valentines was coming up but we lived 1,500 miles away from each other so I couldn’t just take her out and do a simple date. I decided that I needed to send a gift.

I didn’t know this at the time, but I’ve recently read an interesting paper that claims that giving gifts is a key action for an early dating couple like we were.

The idea is that early on in our relationships we haven’t yet determined if our partners are in for the long term (potential spouse material) or if they are going to leave after they get what they want.

Sure you can both say that it’s forever, but it’s too easy to fake that.  When you give a gift expressing interest, though, you are making an investment in the long term.  ”I am spending money to take you to the circus, but that’s  fine because we’ll be together for 50 years”.

If you want the relationship to last you can show your partner much more effectively by exchanging gifts than you can by just telling them.

Why Give Such a Terrible Gift?

But then why am I so proud of this baklava if it was supposed to announce my intentions to her?  Wouldn’t a sack of gold coins be a more effective signal that I wanted her hand in marriage?

Well, yes, but back before I knew her intentions how could I know that she would not take the gold and run?  Or string me along for more gold?

Of course, my lady is different, but the possibility lurks in all new relationships:  gifts are a great way to show that you want the relationship to progress, but they only work so long as your partner is not interested in the gift itself!

So we give ‘inefficient’ gifts.  Gifts that are intentionally more expensive in time or money to give than they are valuable to the giftee.  On the face of it that sounds silly, but it works in a few different ways.

Imagine, after all, if i had gone out and bought some baklava at a Greek restaurant and shipped that to her.  It would have been cheaper (homemade baklava takes a fair amount of time and supplies) to give and it would have been better baklava.

But it would have been a worse gift.

My gift of baklava was all about the time that went into it.  It was about the commitment behind the box, rather than the box of sweets itself.

Come back again next week or subscribe below to learn more about other ways to use gifts while dating to further your plots and schemes.

Edit: She read the above after I wrote it and reminded me of how that evening ended for her.  She apparently took the baklava to a party the night she received it.  Her girlfriends unanimously told her “Marry that guy!” 

You want to be that guy (or girl, and yes, it will work on your boyfriend the same way it worked on  my girlfriend with some small changes)

We all know that it is better to give than to receive. But ‘Chocolate, Sex and Money’ better?

That is the surprising result of a study done at UCLA that looked at the effects of social support on the giver.  I’ll spare you the details (painful electric shocks) but it turns out that the person providing support felt powefully rewarded on a very basic level.

This is surprising because you would expect the person receiving help would appreciate the attention. Taking care of someone is supposed to be a burden though, right?  Well, sometimes I’m sure it is, but we’ve all experienced a deep desire to care for those we love.  This study just confirms what you might have already expected.

What might be unexpected is how primal the reward is.  The psychologists running the study used brain imaging techniques to look at where the reward how the helping was experienced by the givers.  They felt rewarded in the deep, primal parts of the brain that register rewards like (their words) “Chocolate, sex and money”.

Not something that the test subjects had to talk themselves into, in other words.

What’s this got to do with gifts?

Gifts are a form of help and a form of social support.  The attention paid in selecting and giving a gift is what giftees appreciate most about receiving a gift so I don’t think that it is too much of a stretch to compare giving to a form of social support like what was studied in the article I mentioned.

It’s easy to ignore that aspect of giving gifts as adults in America.  It’s easier to give a gift card to your brother or just telephone your parents for their birthdays (I know, that’s what I do by default).

Taking the effort your giving to a deeply connected and social act will pay dividends that are not obvious at first.  The giving, after all, doesn’t have to be difficult and as I said it doesn’t have to be expensive either.

What it does have to be, though, is considerate.

Do It Because You Are Worth It

It’s more work to give gifts like this, of course, I admit.  But it’s worth it.  You can think about how giving gifts will bring you closer to the giftee and generally make people like you (no link for that one, hopefully you don’t need convincing that giving gifts is seen as a nice thing to do).  You can think about what you think you should do or what you would like to do.

But is that what gives parents such joy when they give gifts to their children. What makes giving gifts in a relationship so important and fulfilling?  Why should we bother?

Chocolate, sex and money.

My BFF

We all know the quote:

“‘Tis Better to Receive Than to Give” Right?*

That’s why every kid has a hard time going to sleep on Christmas eve and why we keep hoping to get an envelope from nana with a two dollar bill in it.

But did you know that getting presents from people also draws them nearer to you?

It’s true and its one of the reasons that I encourage people to get and give presents to their friends even past the age when American adults stop exchanging presents.

The Ben Franklin Effect

The idea is an old one but modern studies have supported it.  Ben Franklin noted an exchange in his autobiography with another legislator who disliked him.

Ben found out that the gentlemen owned a rare book that Ben wanted to read and so he asked to borrow it.  After he borrowed and returned the book Ben took a little bit of effort to express his appreciation for the favor and afterwards the gentleman warmed to him.

The act of having done the favor for Mr. Franklin thawed out the dislike of the other gentleman.

The idea has since been studied by psychologists and the theory is that, when we do someone a favor, we tell ourselves stories about why we are doing it.  People want to be consistent. So, if they are doing you a favor, it must be because they like you, right? Or because you are a great guy or somehing similar right?

The helper makes themselves more likely to help you in the future by trying to be consistent.

Asking For Presents

This is interesting because I was just writing yesterday about how a direct request for a gift is likely going to be granted.  I could just imagine my readers’ complaint, though: won’t the gift-giver resent being pushed into giving a present?

Not at all.

The Ben Franklin effect means that (within reason) if you ask someone do to you a favor they will like you more for having done it.

Rather than gift giving being only an expression of a friendship you can also use it to strengthen the bonds between you and your friends.

Advanced Technique for Group Presents

As a parting thought since I was writing about how to organize a group gift yesterday the Ben Franklin can be used for that effort too.

It’s easiest to start with a small request: just get your friend to agree that the idea is a good idea.  That is a small thing to ask.  Then you can ask if they will help you pick the color or the model of the gift that your giftee will like best – taking a little more effort.  Then you can ask for the contribution to the group gift and, because your friend agreed to the first two requests they are more likely to say yest to the third.

Slightly misquoted perhaps...

Of course, a one-step direct request for help will most likely get a ‘yes’, but if your friend has less enthusiasm for the project than you do or if you just need help getting over your own embarrassment to ask this process makes things easier.

So don’t be shy: widen the circle of friends with who you exchange gifts – or widen the circle of family to those you don’t see or interact with very much. Invite them to a birthday or Christmas part and ask them for something.

If you’re still hesitant to ask for a gift from a friend who hasn’t given you a gift in a while (or ever) click over here to read my article about how gift price doesn’t really matter much for making a gift effective.

*Of course the actual quote is “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” I just wanted to get your attention.  I’ll have an article tomorrow on how modern findings demonstrate that, besides being good for your soul, giving to others is good for your health and happiness.

Now how do you get them to all go in together on a gift?

You did it!

You found the perfect gift for mom (or dad or your boss or your brother).

But there’s still a problem:

Your gift idea is perfect in every single way except for the price tag.

You may feel like you cut off the head of one problem just to have two more grow back in its place.

Instead of having to worry about pleasing one person you now need to worry about whether you can get two or three or ten people all to go along with your scheme.

If you are going to ask someone to go in with you it certainly helps if they are already planning on getting a gift, but it turns out that you have a few more advantages on your side that you might not be aware of.  (By the way, I’m assuming you are not thinking of this big gift just because it is expensive, but rather because your giftee asked for something outside your budget right? Right.  Onward.)

You’re More Likely to Get Help Than You Think

It turns out that Americans tend to underestimate how likely someone is to say yes to a direct request to help.  In a study done by behavioral psychologists at Columbia University people tended to overestimate the likelihood that  people would help when asked.

It wasn’t a small difference either.  Team in Training volunteers overestimated the number of people that they would have to ask for donations by almost double what it actually took.  And they were asking strangers for donations!

Getting your sister to go in on a present for dad is relatively easy.

How Should I Bring the Group Gift Up?

The key is being clear and direct about what you want to do.  In the same paper the psychologists describe how people asking for help overestimated how likely people would be to say ‘no’ when asked directly for help.

At the same time they underestimated how likely people would be to say ‘no’ when they were asked indirectly.

So if you want to get a bunch of people together to do a group gift you cannot be shy about it.  Bring your proposal up clearly and ask each person one-to-one to contribute.  It feels more comfortable to bring the idea up and wait to see if people are interested on their own but inertia is powerful.

Without you to bring them together they are more likely to put off taking action – to do what they were planning on doing anyway.  A direct request for help will get their attention, though.

If asking for something big directness matters more than price tag

The direct request is likely to get your friend to contribute even if they weren’t planning on spending much – or anything – on a gift for the recipient.

You’ve already seen this on the job, probably.  If someone is having a birthday or a baby or a retirement at work you might not know them well enough to get them a present or even a card on  your own.  No one does.

But once someone asks you to contribute it is hard to say no.

In the same study I linked above  they found that the difficulty in saying no was actually more important than how big a favor was being asked.  This is why you’ll buy $50 worth of Girl Scout Cookies but not $10 worth of Snackwells: it’s harder to say no to the girl scout than it is to walk by an aisle (also because Samoas are made out of pure dopamine).

You can use the same tactic to get your friends or relatives to band together with you to buy your group gift idea.

I’ll write tomorrow about why you shouldn’t feel guilty about asking for the help either. Rather, why you might want to try to come up with more group gifts.  Read it here.

Easy, but will it make them happy?

Pop quiz:
Which will your gift recipient like more?

A present that you buy them or a gift certificate that they can use to buy the same present.

tick…tick…tick…

Did you guess the gift certificate?

The gift certificate seems to make a lot of sense because it has the advantage of both getting the present or giving your giftee the flexibility to choose something else if they change their minds later.

It makes sense, but it’s wrong.

I’ve embedded an interesting TED talk below where Dr. Dan Gilbert talks about happiness research.  In it he talks about how people are more likely to be happy with a fixed event than one over which they can worry.

Your giftee will be happier with the gift than the gift certificate.

What is also interesting is that (at about 18:28) he shows that 2/3 of students in a study choose the ‘gift certificate’ option that allows them to have flexibility – even though it will, in the end, make them significantly less happy.

We have been moving, as a nation, towards getting people gift certificates for a number of reason – among which is the belief that our giftees will appreciate the flexibility to get what they want.  It turns out that this is the wrong thing to do if you want your giftees to be happy.

The best thing to do is ask your giftee for a wish, wrap it nicely and stick them with it.  They will appreciate the gift as soon as they get it because they asked for it and Dr. Gilbert’s research shows that they will come to like it more over time than they did when they first received it.

What more could you want to give them?

]]> http://www.duckduckgift.com/post/present-over-gift-certificate/feed/ 0 present-over-gift-certificate http://www.duckduckgift.com/post/you-need-a-wish-list/ http://www.duckduckgift.com/post/you-need-a-wish-list/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:20:21 +0000 Eric http://www.duckduckgift.com/?p=323 Continue reading →]]>

..and a pony.

Your friends need your help.

But they won’t ask for it.

If you have a birthday coming up they don’t know what to get you.  They may know your interests and hobbies, but out of the worlds of your (no doubt) fascinating pursuits they don’t know what you need and want now.

So it goes like this:

Your gift giver will realize that your birthday is coming up and think – oh yeah, I should get her something – and then completely forget about your birthday for weeks.

A week out your friend realizes that she still has to get you a birthday present, but she feels like she should have asked a while ago – now she is stuck going to the mall to see if she can find something that says ‘you’.

But she doesn’t, so you get a gift card.

Sound familiar?

Of course it does.  It sounds familiar because I’ve been her.  You’ve been her.  We’ve all fallen into the same trap and it turns out we shouldn’t be surprised.

It’s Harder to Ask for Help Than You Think

A study done recently found something that is both obvious and yet maddeningly hard to remember:  asking for help is hard.  In the study they are looking at whether someone is likely to ask for help on a task but the same insights apply to a gift-giver looking for help from a giftee in selecting a present.

Like when I talked about how people felt about getting gifts that they specifically asked for (gift givers think it’s a bad idea, gift receivers generally like it) how you feel about asking for gift ideas depends on which side of the equation you are on.

Gift receivers (all of us) think that if someone wants help finding a gift for you, they will ask.  We don’t think that gift givers should hesitate to ask – but we underestimate how embarrassed our friends will be to ask.  Your friends will never admit to being embarrassed probably, but they are.  How do I know?

The authors of the study suggest something simple:

Simply asking helpers and outside observers to [imagine a time they had to ask for help] may make them more aware of the embarrassment concerns of help-seekers

Think about the last time you got someone a gift – but didn’t ask them for help picking it.  Why didn’t you ask them?  If you were buying them a gift you probably knew them well enough to pick up the phone, why didn’t you.  Were you embarrassed?

Don’t Wait to Send Your List Out

The main problem with gift lists, of course, is that we are also in the position of ‘asking for help’ when we send them out.  We are asking our friends and our family to buy us presents.

Even if we know ahead of time that they are going to get us a gift (thanks mom!) we are still embarrassed to ask for something.  Much like when your friend was delaying in selecting your gift you may delay in either making a wish list or in sending it out.

But stop – imagine when you have been a gift giver.  Did you mind getting a wish list?  Did you find it rude?  No!

We have to keep trying to place ourselves in the other person’s position to keep unnecessary embarrassment from creeping in.

This last Christmas I received two wish lists the week before Christmas – after I had already selected gifts for the giftees.  Why did they wait?  Were they embarassed?

How and When to Do It

The great news about your wish list is that you don’t need to do it all at once – to spend a great deal of time selecting a wide variety of gifts or presenting a variety of things for your gift giver to choose from. They are more likely to select something from your wish list if you only choose one gift and you are also making things easier for them.

Remember – they are more embarrassed than you think.  Making them choose between multiple gifts introduces another opportunity for them to be embarrassed.  It seems silly when you are getting the gift but think about when you’ve given gifts.  Making a choice between multiple items on a gift list is hard!  It’s harder than it seems like it should be.

But it doesn’t have to make sense.  It just is.

You can make things easier for your gift giver fewer options.  Make a wishlist.  Do it now, it will take less than a minute for you to look up that thing you want on Amazon, click Add to Wish List, and then click ‘E-Mail’.

If your birthday (Or Christmas or whatever) isn’t coming up quite yet take the time now to make a number of small wish lists or write down a few gift wishes so that when the time comes you can send them out to your friends and family and help them out.

If you are looking for more information on why only one wish is best or generally on getting better gifts read this article on gift getting next.

Which one broke the bank? Does it matter?

Quick, name one way to make a gift impressive.

Quick, quick, quick!

Unless I spoiled things with the title of this article you probably thought that spending more makes a gift more impressive.

I would have thought so too, but we’d both be wrong.

It turns out that when psychologists tested whether price was linked to a gift recipient appreciating a gift ornot the answer was, surprisingly, no.

It’s Not About the Money

The studies done broke down a few different gift-giving scenarios.  Mostly they looked at birthday gifts but interestingly they also looked at engagement rings.

You would think (I thought) that, of any type of gift, an engagement ring’s effectiveness would be tied to how much was paid for it.

Nothing of the sort was found when recipients were surveyed, however.

It turns out that all of the hoopla about months’ of income and the arms-race between jewlers to offer more unique and fabulous engagement rings is just what you would expect it is – a carnival to benefit the jewelers rather than the customers.

In the study men expected that price would affect how much their fiances would appreciate the ring.  The ladies in question, however, did not say that it mattered much.  Women who thought that their fiances spent a few hundred dollars reported being just as appreciative as women receiving rings costing thousands of dollars.

The only ones who really benefited from the men’s focus on the price were the jewelers.

They Weren’t Just Being Nice

Your first reaction to reading the above might be to picture the women with cheap rings deluding rationalizing to themselves that they ‘should be’ appreciative or lying to the surveyor in order to not sound petty.

In another interesting twist, however, the studies also included questions that tried to measure how likely someone was to try to please the interviewer.

Questions along the lines of “I don’t steal”. Subtle stuff.

Even adjusting for how often someone bent the truth on those questions, though, people reported appreciating gifts with very little regard for how much they cost. They appreciated gifts for reasons other than how hard it was for the giver to get the gift.

So How Do I Choose a Gift They Will Appreciate?

The authors of the study suggest that what is going on is that gift-givers see the whole process as a shopping trip. You don’t want any of the gifts that might be appropriate for them so the most important difference between them in your eyes is the price.

You want to show that you care for the gift recipient so you are worried about the one difference that you would be interested in among those options – the price.

For the gift recipient, though, getting a gift shows that you are listening to them and paying attention.  Getting a gift that they want shows care and dedication, regardless of the cost.

You can’t just go cheap, of course, and say ‘Well, price doesn’t matter, so here’s some garbage.’

Awww, but thinking is hard...

Rather, being thoughtful and attentive are so important to whether a recipient appreciates a gift that they overwhelm whatever affect price might have.

An expensive gift that you don’t want shows that the giver doesn’t understand you might even work against the giver.  What would you think about someone who spent thousands of dollars to buy you a famous person’s used chewing gum?

To read more about how to pick gifts that a giftee will appreciate check out my article on the Best Gift Ideas here.