The Behavioral Science Guide to Gift Giving
“The Gift of The Magi” is my all-time favorite short story. Written by O. Henry, it tells the story of a young lady, Della, and her husband Jim. Della wants to buy a good gift for her husband, but she is short of money. So she visits a hairdresser, who cuts her long locks of beautiful hair and pays her $20 in return. She uses the money to buy an expensive gold chain for husband’s favorite pocket watch.
When Jim comes home that evening, she gives him the chain and admits to selling her hair in order to be able to afford it. In return, Jim gifts her a set of ornamental combs for her once-long hair and admits to selling his pocket watch to get money for the combs. In other words, both of their gifts are of no use to the recipients—and yet, they don’t complain, because the incident demonstrates how much they love each other.
My other favorite thing to do is to create contemporary versions of classics. So, here’s “The Gift of Magi: Reloaded.”
This is the story of young Della and her husband Jim. Della wants to buy a good gift for her husband. After a few hours of browsing for inspiration through Pinterest and Instagram and reading through listicles with titles such as “50 things to get for your boyfriend this holiday season,” she decides to give him the latest PS4 game, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
To be able to afford the overpriced game, she decides to get rid of the FitBit she had been gifted the previous Christmas. Given its unused, brand-new status, she manages to sell it for a handsome amount on eBay and proceeds to buy the game. In the evening, when Jim returns home, she excitedly hands him a copy of the the new Call of Duty. He informs her that he has upgraded his PS4 to the shiny, new PS5, making the game unusable. Then he proceeds to gift her a FitBit premium subscription, which he thought would go well with his gift from the previous year.
That Christmas, Jim plays his PS5 for 24 hours straight. Della researches online for ways to cancel Fitbit subscriptions.
What’s my point? Buying gifts is hard, and we need science to help us.
References
- Schwartz, B. (1967). The social psychology of the gift. American journal of Sociology, 73(1), 1-11.
- Dunn, E. W., Huntsinger, J., Lun, J., & Sinclair, S. (2008). The gift of similarity: How good and bad gifts influence relationships. Social Cognition, 26(4), 469-481.
- Gino, F., & Flynn, F. J. (2011). Give them what they want: The benefits of explicitness in gift exchange. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(5), 915-922.
- Flynn, F. J., & Adams, G. S. (2009). Money can’t buy love: Asymmetric beliefs about gift price and feelings of appreciation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(2), 404-409.
About the Author
Preeti Kotamarthi
Preeti Kotamarthi has built and led Behavioral Science teams at two of the largest tech companies in Southeast Asia and India. She established the Behavioral Science practice at Grab, helping product and design teams understand customer behavior to create better user experiences. Currently, she heads Behavioral Science and User Research at Swiggy, where she continues to blend data, design, and human insights—drawing inspiration from spending a lot of time with Indian consumers. With a Masters in Behavioral Science from the London School of Economics and an MBA in Marketing from FMS Delhi, Preeti brings over 12 years of experience in consumer products, from co-founding a rural startup in India to shaping behavioral design in tech. Her passion lies in making behavioral science a core part of the product development process. When she’s not uncovering human insights at work, she’s likely busy applying behavioral lessons on her two-year-old.
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