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| Bill (William) Yates, M.D. Brain Post |
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Consumer spending on gifts for birthdays and holidays is a multi-billion dollar big business.Despite this large economic impact, little research examines factors associated with gift recipient satisfaction.
Selecting good gifts for others involves a complex social decision-making process related to judging the value hierarchy of others.
A study from the Netherlands recently published in the journal PLOS One featured three experiments on gift selection in a series of men and women.
The design of these experiments included:
Study One:
- Subjects: 61 study pairs were identified who were involved in a family, romantic or friend relationship
- Gift selection: Participants reviewed a booklet containing pictures of 30 gift items similar to a catalog. Subjects then identified ten gifts they would like to receive and then selected ten gifts they would select for their paired partner. Gift selection rankings were calculated based on level of matching between subject and recipients.
Study Two and Three:
- Subjects: Male and female students at Tilburg University selected gift certificates for individuals from a computer picture of recipients across a broad gender and age profiles.
- Gift selection ranking: Subject gift selection was ranked by comparing it with the recipients actual gift certificate rank list.
- Moderating variables: Subjects completed a psychometric assessment of interpersonal interest (from a measure known as the autism-spectrum quotient-AQ) and interpersonal reactivity (from a measure known as the interpersonal reactivity index-IRI). Ratings on these measures were compared with gift selection ratings using ANOVA statistical analysis.
The key findings from this experiment:
- Gift selection by women subjects matched recipient wishes better than that by gifts selected by men.
- Psychometric differences were found on both measures of social interpersonal function. Women scored lower on the AQ questionnaire than men and higher on the IRI questionnaire.
- Gift selection skill correlated with a lower score on the AQ but was not independently associated with the IRI.
The authors note their findings indicate gift giving skill is related to both a subject's interest, effort and level of interpersonal social cognition.
Women show more interest in the gift-giving process, spend more time in gift-selection and appear as a group to have better interpersonal awareness. This interpersonal awareness may be a key moderator of selecting gifts the recipients actually value.
I selected this study from review on Brain Posts because it takes a relatively straight forward approach to examining an important social decision making process.
Impaired social function contributes to interpersonal conflict, social attachment and occupational functioning. Understanding social processes such as gift-giving may promote better understanding of the normal and abnormal social development process.
Readers with more interest in this research can find a link to the free full-text manuscript by clicking on the PMID link below.
Landscape photo is from the Dingle peninsula in Ireland from the author's files.
Follow the author on Twitter WRY999
Pollmann MM, & van Beest I (2013). Women are better at selecting gifts than men. PloS one, 8 (12) PMID: 24386082
See the original article:
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