If you want to cheer up a friend or loved one, consider giving them a small gift.
Research suggests that gift giving may lift their mood faster and more effectively than a conversation.
“Many people are having a hard time these days, and their loved ones often want to support them, but they do not always know how to do it. Conversations are generally considered to be the “gold standard” way of providing support, but would-be support providers often struggle with what to say. We have previous researchthat shows that givers sometimes substitute gifts for other forms of support, so we were interested in how recipients felt about receiving a gift instead of a conversation. We thought recipients wouldn’t feel as supported by the gift, but they actually felt better after receiving a gift than after having a conversation,” Hillary Wiener, co author of the study and an assistant professor of marketing at UAlbany’s Massry School of Business told Theravive.
The research was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology and found that to the receiver, a gift seems to be more of an effort from the person offering support than if they were just to offer a conversation.
The researchers used seven studies to undertake their research. One involved a behavioral analysis between 81 pairs of friends that involved sacrifices of time and money. As part of that study the friends were given the role of either support giver or support receiver.
The receiver group wrote notes about situations in their life where they wanted support. These notes weren’t seen by the researchers.
The giver group were divided into two groups: one to give a small gift to their friend and the other to talk with their friend. The researchers made sure that gifts and time had a comparable value.
The people in the support role said they felt better after receiving the gift rather than after having a talk.
Other studies by the researchers involved an examination of why the recipients saw gift giving as a larger sacrifice, how direct enjoyment might play a role as well as the intentionality of gift giving.
“We found two main reasons gifts were so well received. First, recipients felt like the giver had made a bigger sacrifice when they gave them a gift than when they had a conversation with them. The fact that the giver was willing to make a sacrifice to help them feel better made recipients feel cared about and loved. So it really is the thought that counts for these supportive gifts. Second people were often more surprised by the gift than the conversation, so it led them to feel temporarily distracted from their problems, which led to a boost in mood, too,” Wiener said.
She adds that to some, the findings of the research might seem controversial.
“It does seem counterintuitive, and we were initially surprised by our results. However, the results are very robust across different types of studies, gifts, and conversation types,” she said.
“Of course there is still an important role for conversations. We looked at support for minor negative events—a bad day at work or a break up—not major tragedies. Just giving a gift may be less appropriate for more severe events. We also did not investigate how people feel about receiving multiple gifts over time. If someone only gives gifts and never has supportive conversations, it is likely that the benefit of gifts will fade. Over the course of a relationship, providing a mix of gifts and conversations is likely the best approach, but at the moment it seems that most people are tilted toward having too many conversations and not giving enough supportive gifts.”
Whilst the gifts were well received, Weiner notes that gifts need not be expensive for the receiver to benefit from them.
“Most of the gifts we looked at were not very good gifts. They were small—flowers or a Door Dash gift card or a cupcake—and not very personalized to the recipient. However, they still made people feel better than a small gesture of conversational support,” she said.
“Give more gifts! These days I am giving more gifts than I was before starting this research project.”