How To Choose The Perfect Gifts: 9 Science-Backed Rules (P)

Avoid these gift-giving pitfalls that could ruin your holidays.

Giving and receiving gifts can be a no-win situation.

We assume friends and family know us well enough to choose a good gift.

So, when a bad gift comes it tends to reflect poorly on the relationship.

Poor gifts may lead people to question their similarity with each other, thereby damaging the relationship.

However, men and women seem to have different psychological defence mechanisms for dealing with poor gifts: women pretend the gift is just what they’ve always wanted, whereas men are more likely to say what they think.

Either way, though, bad gifts are damaging, so here are nine tips from psychological science to help you get it right.

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Author: Dr Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004.