Panic Saturday: What is the psychology behind gifting?

What studies say about gift-giving could help with the last minute Christmas rush

Choosing the right gift can often be difficult (AP)

Panic Saturday is here, the day dedicated to last-minute Christmas gift-shopping and flooding the post office to send forgotten cards.

Before joining a sweating throng of up to 12.6 million Britons on the high street (and it will be sweaty, with temperatures meant to hit 16C today in London), it may help to understand what gift-giving is all about.

A study by behavioural scientist Francesca Gino and professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford suggested giving people gifts they actually want and asked for, rather than taking a shot in the dark.

They found that not only would a recipient appreciate a gift they asked for more than a “surprise gift”, they would also perceive the gift-giver as being “extra-thoughtful”.

However, gift-givers tend to believe it does not make a difference whether the recipient gets what they want or something else entirely.

If you are still at a loss of what to give someone, then choosing a present that reflects your own personality may do the trick.

When it comes to finding presents for those closest to you, choosing something that reflects the giver tends to promote closeness, according to psychologists Lara Aknin and Lauren Human.

After surveying hundreds of people, they found many people prefer to choose a gift that reflects the personality and interests of the recipient.

However, they posit that “giving a gift that reveals something of your own true self” could foster a much greater sense of intimacy because “it’s an act of personal disclosure”.

Giving money as a gift will always be a fail-safe, no matter how impersonal gift-givers perceive it to be. A study of 107 student participants found that recipients appreciate money much more than items they had asked for.

Both researchers conclude their results show “people’s relative inability to take other people’s perspectives into account”.

Their advice is to “pay attention to gift registries, wish lists, and explicit requests from friends and significant others”.

Interestingly, you can gauge how good your relationship with another person is based on how they reject your gift, should they find it unsatisfactory.

Hopefully it doesn’t happen to anyone, but a study by Catherine Roster of the University of New Mexico found while frowns and false smiles are signs a gift has been unsuccessful, the failure to say “thank you” was the only response “reliably associated with how detrimental participants said the incident would be to the future of their relationship”.

It found that even the most ungrateful recipient could make the situation a little bit better by expressing thanks, even if it wasn’t genuine.

Ms Roster also discovered that unsuccessful gift-giving caused more harm to relationships that were distant or already of poor quality more than others.