Christmas, a worldwide festival marked by a gush of shopping, a large proportion of which is for gifts. It’s appropriate therefore to look at the psychology of giving and receiving gifts.
The Australian Retail Association for example is predicting a 2.4 per cent increase in consumer spending in the three weeks after Christmas. NSW consumers alone are expected to spend $4.37 billion.
Christmas is, after all, according to [some] spiritual teachings a time for the planet's 2.3 billion Christians to celebrate the conviction that Jesus Christ is himself a gift, offered for the redemption of all. A time when carols tell of 3 wise men bringing gifts of gold, frank-incense and myrrh to a baby born 2,000 years ago.
Christian Smith, a Notre Dame University sociology professor who carried out work studying generosity says people give for many different reasons, not all of them wonderful.
People give for strategic, impulsive, sentimental, habitual and ideological reasons, as well as out of guilt. Studies show people who are religious respond to their faith's life-is-a-gift teachings by being more magnanimous, both to their own spiritual organization and beyond.
In addition, research reveals generosity is good for you, with seniors who volunteer living longer. People who give more, says Smith, are "happier, healthier and doing better in life."
And gift giving is not confined to us Human. University of Washington bird expert John Marzluff has discovered that crows and other birds give trinkets or food. They do so to inspire loyalty, Marzluff says, and like us, for the enjoyment of it.
Paul Zak, founder of Claremont Graduate University's Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, has discovered gift-giving goes up with levels of oxytocin - the hormone produced in the pituitary gland that is released during child-birth, and as people bond.
Zak's team gave an oxytocin nasal spray to half the subjects playing a game that required deciding whether to give money away. The oxytocin dose increased their generosity by 80 per cent.
Researchers, as well as Smith also know that people who have more money often give less. Such research feeds the cynicism associated with Charles Dickens' classic story A Christmas Carol, supporting the Scrooge theme that the rich are often more grasping and fearful.
The French deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, argued a gift is not a gift if there is any expectation of receiving anything in return, even a "thank you." While there's no doubt gifts can be used to manipulate people, gifts may be more so about cementing relationships.
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