Opinion: To give great gifts, stop thinking like a gift giver

The idyllic holiday scene — piles of presents, smiles all around — rarely matches reality. I’ve researched these questions through the lens of social psychology, trying to understand the psychological science of gift giving in hopes of helping gift givers make better choices. The first thing to appreciate is that even though we all act as gift givers and gift recipients, we don’t typically do so at the same time: Even when exchanging gifts, we are thinking like a giver in advance, and then thinking like a recipient in the moment. When we give gifts, what we tend to believe matters most is the moment of the gift exchange — the moment when a recipient unwraps their gift and sees it for the first time. Putting this all together, science shows us that the best way to give great gifts is to stop thinking like a gift giver, and instead start thinking like a gift recipient.