The shadow side of social gift-giving: miscommunication and failed gifts

Communication Research Trends, Sept, 2006 by J.D. Sunwolf

Answer: It all depends. The difficult balance between self and other and between genuineness and artificiality is magnified for receivers who feel they must manage the feelings of everyone else in the gift exchange. As gift-receivers, they experience role strain, which contributes to gifthate. Cheal (1987) first applied dialectics to the issues in gift exchange, describing the contradictory social matrix of intimacy and independence that is challenged during gifting. One 18-year old female respondent managed to crowd a paragraph of feelings about her role as gift receiver into a tiny space, with small careful printing:

   Christmas. I have to open each gift from extended
   family members in front of them. The entire
   situation is flawed. I will undoubtedly like one
   gift better than the other and will appreciate one
   the most. But because every giver is watching, I
   must equally show interest and like in all of the
   gifts. As a result, the people who gave the best
   gift won't ever know how much I appreciate it,
   because to them their gift is no different than any
   of the others.

Wolfinbarger and Yale (1993) found that one of the three motivations of interpersonal gift giving was obligation, yet gift receivers dread receiving those gifts. One 21-year old female receiver described the reality that "obliged" gifts don't fool anyone, and may burden receivers, "The worst thing about giving gifts is doing it only out of obligation. Being on the receiving end of this is awful. I would rather not receive anything."

If it is painful to perform unfelt gratitude, the answer lies in digging deeper and experiencing gratitude. In short, the gift message was not the object.

C. Is Gift Competition a Winable Sport?

Answer: No. When gifts are opened to an audience or when multiple givers are present, comparison across gifts is facilitated. Givers who anticipate this situational component may worry about their gifts being good enough to elicit desired reactions, as well as being good enough in light of other gifts received. Gift giving may morph for some givers to competitive-gifting or "gifting-to-win," with attendant stresses that accompany winning, losing, or being publicly ranked.

Sometimes we give a gift that seems to make someone happier, and we hold that success out as regularly achievable in our gift competitions. We even compete with our own prior (perceived) successes. Objects may make people genuinely happier, but not necessarily in the long run. However, having a desired object always leaves people free to want something else.

Adorno (1974) suggested 30 years ago that people had begun forgetting how to give presents:

   Even private giving of presents has degenerated to
   a social function exercised with rational bad grace,
   careful adherence to the prescribed budget, skeptical
   appraisal of the other and the least possible
   effort. Real giving had its joy in imagining the joy
   of the receiver. It means choosing, expending time,
   going out of one's way, thinking of the other as a
   subject: the opposite of distraction. Just this, hardly
   anyone is now able to do. (p. 42)