The Christmas season is known for celebrations, relaxation, and giving gifts to one another. The only challenge is identifying the right gift to give to your loved ones. In fact, it has been proven to be a task that comes with a lot of anxiety and stress. This is due to the fact that the wrong gift can lead to or cause more harm than good.
Following is some advice to consider based on extensive research.
But First, Why Do We Give Gifts?
Well, according to psychological research on gift-giving, the findings suggest that there are two goals or purposes to gift-giving. These are?
- Making the recipient happy – You give gifts to make the other person happy and to be kind to yourself as well. However, this will largely depend on whether the gift was requested by the recipient.
- Strengthening relationships – To strengthen relationships, the giver must give a thoughtful and memorable gift. The gift should indicate how well the giver knows the recipient. This means knowing what someone needs without asking them directly.
These two goals or purposes create a conundrum. To give someone a gift, the obvious thing to do is ask them what they want. This method can help you get high marks on the desirability scale but sets you up to fail at communicating thoughtfulness.
Navigating Social Risk
Social risk is the primary factor that causes or induces stress and anxiety. The right gift can improve the quality of the relationship between the giver and recipient, and this is a fact. It will increase a feeling of bonding, connection, and commitment; and a poorly received gift will have the opposite effect.
How Much Does The Thoughts Count?
Research has proven that people often overestimate their ability to separate what a recipient would like. According to 2011 statistics, that involved asking random married people to think back on their wedding and rate how appreciative they were of the gifts they received, whether listed on the gift registry or not.
First, most of the people appreciated and preferred the gifts on their list to those that were not. This proved that giving inappropriate, unsolicited gifts is not as appreciated as one would like to think. In fact, it has the opposite effect. Moreover, the statistic proved that gift-givers tend to overestimate their thoughtfulness if the gift is expensive. In other words, they assume that if a gift is expensive, the giver is highly thoughtful.
However, this is far from the truth. Both expensive and affordable gifts are considered to have a similar effect on recipients. In fact, a convenient gift is mostly preferred over expensive gifts.
The Psychology Of Cash
A majority of gift givers prefer to give out cash as a gift. After all, the gift recipient can buy exactly what they most desire. On the other hand, giving out cash is unthoughtful because it has no effort behind it.
In Chinese culture, cash is given in a red envelope to reject it as a commodity but rather as a symbol of good luck. Therefore, you can apply this technique if you plan to give out cash as a gift. In other words, try to be creative about it. By doing this, it will have a degree of thoughtfulness. The other alternative is to use gift cards. You should note that gift cards demand some effort and thoughtfulness when it comes to your selection of the card you have purchased. Giving a gift card should be your last resort.
What Is The Best Gift To Give This Christmas?
If you are looking to wrap a gift and place it under the Christmas tree, consider going with something practical with a personalised touch. This means going for something practical and relevant to the recipient. If you are not sure what to get, consider a thoughtful and relevant gift card. For example, if the recipient loves everything about food, consider dining gift card options.