What do you get the ,an who has everything?

They’ve got that. They’ve got that. They’ve got that.

What could they possibly need?

For me it’s my parents, my grandparents and my boss.  I want to buy them presents for Christmas or their birthdays, but I have a hard time finding something that they could possibly want.

After all, they make more money than me and aren’t shy about buying things.

That’s why I was very interested to read a paper recently that gave me a very solid starting point for buying gifts for people who already have it all.

I’ll Give You 4-1 Odds

The psychologists in the paper look at what purchases or gifts made people happy.  They were interested mostly in finding out if people enjoyed having experiences or things more and, mostly by accident, they shed some light on the old ‘what do you get the person who has everything’ question.

It turns out that, while most people are made happier by experiences than things, this is much more true of the people making the most money in the survey.  For people making $150,000 a year or more   80% said that experiences made them happier than things.

This is not mom trying to not make you feel bad by saying that she just wants you to shovel the driveway, this is people saying how they felt about purchases that they had made for themselves as well.

That’s 4-1 odds that you shouldn’t be shopping at the mall, you should be making a card.

Why Give Experiences?

This is a bit of a theme at DuckDuckGift.  It turns out that experience gifts literally make people happy after the fact, whereas gifts usually don’t.

Also gifts of experiences aren’t compared as much to other gifts the person receives – which might be all the more important if you are buying gifts for a boss or a wealthy client who might also be receiving other big-ticket presents.

The effect of experiences compared to physical gifts is so great that even just writing a card that goes with the gift and emphasizes the experience of having the gift makes the recipient like it more.

In the same paper that I was talking about above they found that a majority of people, 60%, preferred experiences to physical gifts – that’s worth knowing too, but the odds are most in your favor, 80%, when you are facing the toughest gift giving challenges which is even better.

But What Experiences Can I Give Them?

One of the best things about giving an experience gift is that you don’t have to worry about them already having it.

If you know that your recipient gets a massage every now and then you can give them another and make it memorable with a nice card or by going with them (if that is appropriate).

I’ve had people complain that they dont’ know how to come up with experiences to give someone, but I suspect that it’s just because people are not in the habit of giving experience gifts.  Anything you could give as a physical gift can also be given as an experience.

Instead of a golf polo give a certificate for a golf swing analysis.  Instead of a book give tickets to see one of their favorite authors give a talk.  Instead of a new top give her a spa day.

I don’t know your recipient and you do so I will stop there, but hopefully this has gotten you thinking.  Click any of the links up above to get more great ideas for giving experience gifts.

This is a quick follow-up to my post about most returned gifts.

It occured to me after writing that article that you can combine the numbers from a few different papers to figure out exactly how often clothes are returned.

If 10% of gifts are returned and 25% of gifts are clothes and 85% of gifts that get returned are clothes then… drumrolllllll

40% of clothes given as gifts are returned.  That’s almost half!  You’ve got a 50-50 shot at giving your recipient an errand (keep the receipt, go return it, shop for something she really does want) instead of a gift.

That’s bad gift giving.

The takeaway: DON’T GIVE CLOTHES AS GIFTS.

Unless your recipient specifically asks for something and tells you her size.

Otherwise the odds just aren’t in your favor.

gifts

15% of the money spent on gifts are wasted.

27% of gift cards sit unused.

40% of clothes given as gifts are returned.

Obviously there is a problem here, gift givers and gift receivers aren’t coming together on what, exactly, makes a great present.

So if you give a gift to your mom are you picking a bad gift or is it her problem?

The answer is obvious. Your mom is shallow.

Gifts Are Not Food, They Are Diamonds

The fact that you got a gift is not enough.

We want gifts to function like we are giving food to a hungry person – more is more.  They should be happy that they got something from you.  The real picture is more complex.

In an interesting paper that I just read out of the University of Chicago participants in a research study were given different amounts of milk and asked how happy they were with it.  I would think that how happy they were would just depend on how much they received, just like we expect how happy our recipients are with our gifts just depends on how much we spend on them.

Nope.

In the trial people’s happiness depended more on how much other people got in the test than on how much they received.  They compared their cups to the cups received by other participants and the comparison was more important than what was in their own cup.

When you are giving a gift to someone they can’t help but do the same.  If you give them a gift it will be compared to other gifts that they receive at the same time, or to gifts that others are receiving (say, at Christmas where multiple people are opening presents).

It’s not your mom’s fault that she is shallow, we are all just wired that way.

What Can I Do About It?

In the past I’ve reccomended giving experience gifts to avoid some of the comparison problems but this experiment shows that experience gifts still have some comparison problems.  The cups of milk were not given just to have they were given to drink.

Instead the solution suggested in this paper is to try to not be compared.

Instead of giving gifts at the same time as everyone else (at a big birthday party or Christmas gathering) can you send the gift either ahead of time or later?

For my son we have taken to only letting him open one present per day on his birthday and Christmas.  He is blatant about comparing his gifts since he is three and hasn’t learned to disguise his true feelings yet.

When he opened a train and socks on Christmas day last year he literally threw the socks over his shoulder and went back to playing with the train. Kind of embarassing.

When he opened just pajamas a few days later, though, he was excited and wanted to wear them immediately. Roughly the same gift, but very different responses because of the comparison effect.

You want to be the pajamas instead of the socks.

These days it’s easy to avoid the comparison effect. Buy your gifts on Amazon and have them shipped to your recipient’s house.  They will be opened when they are received instead of at a large gathering and are much more likely to be appreciated as the thoughtful gifts that I am sure they are.

Even if it’s your mother.

gifts

Do you have plans to spend more/less next year?

Do you wish you could get through Christmas without taking out a second mortgage on your house?

It’s the post-holday hangover; looking at your bank statements and trying to figure out if it was really all worthwhile.

It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that spending lots of money on Christmas presents makes people less happy at Christmas rather than more happy, so why spend the cash?

It’s a hard move to make.  One of my cousins this year tried to move to a secret santa system from buying presents for everyone in the family and literally drove one of her sisters to tears.

She’s not alone, either.  The same paper I linked to above found that, while spending lots of money made people less happy at Christmas.  So did actively trying to spend less.

It’s quite a catch, catch-22.

The Problem With Spending Less: Tradition

One of the problems that I suspect that people run in to is that change is hard during the holidays. Maintaining traditions and doing things as a family is one of the activities that predicts a happy Christmas, so breaking from a tradition that brings everyone together is difficult.

I think that rather than buying fewer presents you might try buying smaller presents for everyone.  If you know the ‘no medium presents‘ rule you might already know that spending $10 less might have less than $10 effect on how your present is received anyway.  Try it.

The Problem with Spending Less: Expectations

The other big problem that I’m sure occurs to you too is expectations in the minds of your gift recipient.

If your brother and you have a history of big gifts how do you throttle back to a $20 Christmas?

Fortunately this is an easier problem to deal with than it seems like.

It turns out that the problem of comparing gifts – both to other gifts received by the person and to the imaginary gift that they thought you were getting – can be helped by getting an experience gift.

Experience gifts tend to stand on their own instead of being compared to other gifts.  So if you are worried about your sister, say, comparing her gift to what you exchanged last year or what she might get from mom give her the gift of a trip together to the amazing coffee place that you don’t usually get to or to go paint a small piece of pottery together.

As a gift it will stand up well and afterwards the memory of the experience will only get better with time.

The good news about all of this is that while the short term stress of changing your gift-giving traditions might be hard it is still true that presents are not what Christmas is about and the stress is likely to be forgotten in time while fond memories of time spent together as a family only get sweeter.

photo credit: 1

What?

Wasn’t this supposed to be a blog about giving gifts?

Well, yes, it is, and I am still continuing in my quest to give better gifts, but for as much as I talk about picking better gifts I think it’s important to keep the giving of gifts in perspective.

Plus I just came across one a silly little psychology paper that I just have to share with you.

What Makes For a Merry Christmas?

The above is actually the title for an article I just read by Tim Kasser and Ken Sheldon and, in their defense, it’s not that silly an article.   They ask what makes people happy at Christmas.

The answer, unsurprisingly, is the same as what makes people happy at other times of the year – spending time with family, practicing your religion, and not spending too much of your time or energy going shopping.

The findings are nothing new or surprising, but I did think that they are good to remember from time to time.  There is a lot of ‘keep up with the Jones’ pressure to spend more on presents but there is absolutely ZERO evidence that spending more money on presents makes either the purchasers or the receivers happier.

Being close to my family

The authors did find that people are happier at Christmas than they are at other times of the year, but  it was because they reported spending more time with their family.

They may have come together to exchange presents, but it was the coming together that was important.  (Number two was practicing their religion but that is between you and you… um… yeah.)

Hence the title of the post – try to spend more time with your family next Christmas.  If it comes down to buying plane tickets or buying presents…

What Does This Mean for Gift Selection

I don’t want to discourage anyone from giving gifts, as you might imagine I think it’s a ton of fun.  So what does the above mean for picking gifts?

1. Spend more time getting to know your recipients.

You should already, at a minimum, be asking your recipients what they want.  You can really get into this and use that phone call to take an interest in your loved ones.  If you are going to get your cousin a football-themed gift take a few minutes to talk football with him.  You don’t have to like it like him (I don’t) but try to understand why he likes it.

2. Don’t keep up with the Jones’

Don’t try to ‘wow’ your recipient with big ticket items, the return on your investment is just not that great.  Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses, or the Smiths, or the Chandreshekars, or anyone else.  They are all jerks, I checked.

3. Give more experience gifts that you participate in

A lunch out together is a great gift that I feel like I never remember to give.  Instead of a gift card give a shopping trip together.  Presumably you like this person you are giving a gift to, so do the gift with them, don’t just send them away with a box.  You’ll both be happier for it.

I write about how to pick gifts for people and you’ve probably done lots of searching over your life for the perfect gift.

We’ve all been there.

Once you pick the gift that’s it, though right? You’re done?

As you might suspect, no.  I recently read about a weird trick that will make your gift recipient enjoy your gift more, no matter what that gift is. Let me fill you in.

Last Time on DuckDuckGift

In the last few posts here on DuckDuckGift I’ve been dissecting a paper from a pair of happiness researchers at Cornell that looks at how we value experiences vs. material possessions.

The article has several things to say about picking gifts.  Importantly that experience gifts are generally better than material gifts  even if they can sometimes be harder to select.  This is because dollar-for-dollar we enjoy experiences more than things.  Especially as time goes on things break and wear out but memories just get more pleasant.

Experience gifts stand up better when compared to other gifts.  This is because we don’t tend to compare experiences the way we compare things.  We don’t look for ‘the best’ experience like we look for ‘the best’ car.  This is important for gifts because your recipient already has gift wishes in mind – sometimes it’s hard to pick ‘the best’ gift that will compare well to their unexpressed desires.

But You Said Any Gift?

Most gifts are material things, though, not experiences.  Most presents given and received are tangible things that you can wrap and put a bow on top of for Christmas morning.  What does any of this have to do with those gifts.

That is another finding in the paper that I think is absolutely fascinating.  They asked people to evaluate how much they enjoyed a boxed set of music.  In one version of the experiment the participants were asked to thing of having the set.  In the other version they were asked to imagine the experience of listening to the music.  The set was the same either way.

The experience-imaginers liked the music quite a bit more.

The effect is not huge but its impact applies to probably every gift that you give.  Almost every gift you gift, after all, comes with a card of some kinds right? What do you put there?

What to Write to Win Their Minds

The surprising finding from the article is that your recipient will enjoy your gift more if you take just a sentence or two to describe the feelings and emotions that you hope the gift will convey to them.

You don’t have to spoil the surprise if you don’t want to either,

• For CDs – “I hope you connect to these songs the same way that I did and that you come back to them time and again.”
• A train set – “I hope Aiden has fun putting together lots of different patterns and you have many happy hours playing with your little guy.” (shameless play for parental approval)
• Boots – “I can’t wait to see the heads turn when you wear these out with us next weekend, you are going to hurt someone.” What is really tickling me about this is that it answers the question of what to write on Christmas cards too.  Maybe you are more creative than me, but I usually go the lazy route and just do a ‘merry Christmas’ or ‘happy birthday’ for everyone.

Writing about the experience is fun and the fact that it helps them enjoy my present more is simply a nice perk.

A third benefit if this appeals to you is that talking about the experiences and emotions that you hope that they have without talking about what the gift is can really increase anticipation of your gift.

“What am I going to connect to?” “What is Aiden going to be building?” “How am I going to turn heads?”  These are the questions that drive men wild with curiosity.  ”I think you’ll like it” doesn’t.

Takeaway – Write the Experience

There you go – I didn’t think that anything that I found out when I started learning about gift giving could be that simple or that broadly applicable but writing the experience on a card when you give a gift takes less than five minutes, can be done for anyone, and makes them enjoy your gift better.

Do it.

Grandma knows how to win those kisses
credit: thedianna on Flickr

Stupid grandma.

Beat me again.

How are you supposed to pick a gift that shows that you care when other people pick gifts that show that they care about $150 more?

It’s a situation you’ve surely been in.  At a birthday party or large Christmas to-do and you brought a very nice present only to see it chucked over someone’s shoulder in favor of another.

Kids are particularly merciless about this, not that I am bitter or anything.

Fortunately you can protect yourself from this kind of competition, not by trying to outspend Grandma Jones, but by playing a different game.  I’ll show you how.

Why Gifts Become Competitive

There is a lot of research research on how we make purchasing decisions that talks about how we compare items.  If we buy a TV we want the best TV and, it turns out, we do the same sort of comparisons even for things we don’t pay for.

If you already have something, say a TV again, it shouldn’t affect how much you like it to find out that there is now a better model available, but it does.  We like something less to find out that there is something better out there.

This is a long way of saying what you already know: someone may like your gift, but then forget about it five minutes later if they open a better one.

In recent research from Cornell the authors describe how we maximize when we look at material things.  In a gift context we want the best gift even if we are too polite to say that and other gifts seem less valuable or important by comparison

How Can I Avoid This?

If you are going to ‘win’ maybe you don’t mind, maybe you have the perfect something for your best friend that will blow everyone away. But what if you don’t?

What if you want to give a gift that will be enjoyed on its own merits that doesn’t have to be the best that they ever received?

It turns out that we evaluate experiences very differently than we evaluate material goods.  The same article linked above looks in detail at how we compare experiences that we purchase (vacations or dinners at a restaurant or such) as opposed to material things that we purchase.

Experiences tend to be evaluated on their own – without being compared to other experiences that we have had or could have had. We ask ‘was the experience good enough’ instead of ‘was it the best’.

That means when you give the gift of babysitting your sister’s kids you won’t be overshadowed by mom buying her favorite boots (or what have you).

Experience Gifts?

I’ve already written about the perks of giving experience gifts - for the same amount of money spent people tend to enjoy experiences more than things.  That’s before they’re being compared to other gifts too, and it’s a fact of life that most of the time we are giving gifts with other people – i.e. Christmas or birthdays.

You till have to choose an experience they want, of course (and do you know the best way to do that?).  If you can get that right, though you can be assured that your recipient will fondly remember your small but heartfelt present long after she’s forgotten everything unwrapped that day.

We had picked out a gift for my sister in-law about a month in advance.  My wife wanted to make her something so she needed lead time.

A few weeks before Christmas, though, I overhead a conversation with mom in law about a present that she couldn’t find for sis.

She wanted a set of Pink brand University of Washington sweats but they were a limited-time only offering. No more were to be had in their little town.

I didn’t immediately need this information but, since I make a habit now of capturing ideas like this for future reference I duly noted it.

A week later I was in a mall in the Big City of Seattle buying a gift for my youngest son and just happened to walk by a Victoria’s Secret.  I asked the sales girl just in case and it turns out that they had some of the sweats!

I got mom on the phone and we arranged for her to give the sweats for Christmas after all.

I feel particularly good about this one (even though I ended up getting the size wrong, clothes are always risky).  We still wound up giving her the jewelry that my wife had made, but thanks to a little elf my sis get what she wanted for Christmas and I helped mom find the present that she wanted to give her daughter.

A perfect example of what I am trying to learn in the process of writing this blog: it didn’t cost anyone a dime (that they weren’t already planning on spending) but everyone was happier at the end.

God bless us, every one.

(As a P.S. don’t forget that she could have avoided the size mix up by making a wish list that included sizes – something I think everyone should do.  It’s mostly my fault but if you want to get good gifts it helps to make things easy for your friends and family.)

I think that I picked some good gifts in general.  My wife squealed and jumped up and down when she found out what she was doing and my son’s face lit gratifyingly.

In my quest to become a better gift giver, though, I feel like I learned more from an opportunity that I screwed up. I got my mother in law a present that she asked for, and that I think she liked, and that did not excite her.  Let me tell you how I missed the point this Christmas.

What’s Went Wrong?

I hate to brag (not true) but I had a great Christmas.  I spent it with my wife’s family and had a great time. This was the first year that my son (3) was old enough to do Santa and have the official Christmas Morning Surprise.

Once he had gone to sleep the night of Christmas eve grandma pulled out her neatly organized shoe boxes of stocking stuffers for her grandchildren and children.  We had a pleasant evening watching everyone’s favorite Christmas movie (Love, Actually) while she puttered around getting things ready.

At the end of the evening she tossed of a nonchalant “Did anyone get me anything for my stocking or should I fill it too?”  Ouch.

She didn’t try to bring attention to it, but that is what she really wanted for Christmas and I completely missed it.

So What, I Don’t Buy Presents for Her.

My error was specific – I didnt’ get my mother in law what she wanted for Christmas, but I think the problem is general, which is why I think it’s worth mentioning here.

I bought a gift the way that I wanted to receive gifts: I bought her a book, wrapped it and presented it.  I think most of us give gifts the way that we like to receive gifts, it’s the classic Martha Stewart Mistake.  After all one of the biggest reasons that we give gifts is because it makes us feel good. 

The whole point of this blog, the journey I am trying to take here, is to understand how to pick gifts that make my recipients feel good, though.  I probably could have completely skipped the wrapped present and made my mother in law ecstatic with a well planned stocking surprise.

I could have spent less and shopped less, but made her happier.  That’s the kind of win I am trying to look for as I study gifting.

Lessons Learned

I’m making an entry in my gift journal about my mother in law to remind me next year to focus on her stocking.  Have you thought about your own gifts from this year?  Have you taken notes or asked friends what they thought about their gifts?  If so please leave a comment, I know not many people come to this blog yet, but I like to hear about people’s gift-giving wins and thoughts.

That’s the dream, right; we give someone a gift and then they are happy.

How often does it work out like that?  How many gifts have you given that have played out like a jewelry commercial where your recipients eyes light up and they are still thanking you for the gift six months later.

Not many.

And it is so hard to find the perfect gift that sometimes it doesn’t seem like it is worth the effort.  Fortunately recent research into what makes us happy suggests some clues as to how we can make our gift recipients happier by choosing the right type of gift rather than stress about the exact right gift itself

A Problem With Gifts

The problem with giving gifts is these darn receivers, of course.  The problem is also with us when we receive gifts too, though, we can’t help it.  It’s a human thing; we compare the gift we receive with other gifts we receive at the same time or with other things that our recipients wished for.

Have you ever tried to give a kid an off-brand version of a toy that they want? Or the wrong character from their favorite show?  You might as well have given them a dirty toothbrush as a present it’s not the right one.

Kids are less graceful about covering their feelings but psychologists have found that we all do this.  The problem is greatest when we are doing the buying and deciding ourselves but it applies to gifts as well.

My parents have me a messenger bag six years ago that was perfect for carrying my rain gear and reading material to the bus stop for my commute.  However it wasn’t the exact type of bag that I wanted and I still think of the bag that I wanted whenever I use the bag they gave me.

Now the bag they gave me is 98% as awesome as the one I was thinking of, but it could have been 2% better.  This is called maximization and it can dull the impact of any gift.  

An Interesting Exception

It turns out that we do this type of comparison more with some items than others.  It’s easier to compare the features of two brands of the same product on the shelves at a store (say, if you are shopping for TVs).  Gifts, fortunately, escape some comparison effect because the alternative gifts are not aroudn to be compared; they get what they get.

But there is a different type of gift that escapes even more of this problem – experiences.

What the psychologists in the article above have found is that we don’t tend to play the comparison game at all with experiences, possibly because they are harder to compare or exchange.  Instead of thinking about the best/perfect item we tend to evaluate experiences in terms of ‘is it good enough’?

Is the lunch that I take you to at the bistro down the street better than the dinner at the Mexican place downtown? Is a bike tour more or less fun than a sightseeing sail?  The comparison does not seem to dull our enjoyment of whichever option is chosen – unlike with my messenger bag both are good enough.

Takeaway : Experience Gifts are Safer Bets

Now, mind you, you still have to find out what your recipient wants.  You know better than to get them something that you are interested in, right? With a little thought, though, an experience can be the ultimate personalized gift since there’s no such thing as an off-the-shelf experience.  Even package deals are always unique and your recipients memory of the event will be their very own.  Try finding that at the mall.

For that big reason and another I’ll cover next time experience gifts have a lot to reccomend them over material gifts.  I should add that this is even more true if you are looking for a gift for your significant other.  Make sure to come back for more benefits of experience gifts next time.