But Actually ...

It turns out that -- surprise! -- people don't like surprises as much as we think they do.

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Professors from Harvard and Stanford ran a series of experiments on gift-giving -- five of them, to be exact, because apparently that's all researchers are busy with these days (suck it, cancer!). What they found each time was that recipients generally just wanted to get the gift they explicitly asked for, and get this: The receivers actually perceived such explicitly-asked-for gifts as "more thoughtful and considerate" than the special surprise gifts the givers spent so much time trying to hunt down. The gift-giving motto is apparently "Don't think. Just do as commanded," a phrase you typically don't see spelled out on festive holiday sweaters.

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But what's really interesting about this is that we should already now it. Think about it -- we're all givers and receivers of gifts -- so while we know we prefer to get precisely what we want, we all assume other people prefer to get thoughtful gifts that may be way off the mark. In other words, we trust ourselves to find a super awesome gift the recipient didn't even know they wanted, but we assume other people are too stupid to do that for us. Typical.

Oh, and do you know what gift consistently got the highest rating? Cash. The laziest, easiest, least personal gift you can give someone is also the one they look forward to getting the most. Because that removes all doubt about whether or not they'll get the right thing -- cash always fits.

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Well in this case, for some reason adding a small gift to a big gift doesn't make the recipient think, "Ooh, more stuff." Our brain doesn't add up the gifts when deciding on value, it averages them out. A $100 sweater and a $10 gift card says to our brain, "This stuff is worth, like, 50 bucks." This is known as the Presenter's Paradox (also a suitable name for going back in time and killing the guy on TV that told you how to build a time machine).

When looking at a package deal, our brain has a tendency to use the lesser parts to dilute the value of the greater parts. It works for good and bad things both -- adding two hours of community service to a $750 fine made people rate the punishment as less severe than the fine by itself.

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It actually almost makes sense when presented that way -- you hear the two hours and think, "Well, the judge must not have been THAT mad at me: Two hours is nothing!" and it puts the fine in a new light. So if somebody gives you what appears to be a very expensive rhinestone codpiece, and inside you find they've also tossed a $5 coupon to Taco Bell, you think, "OK, these rhinestones probably aren't real."

But there is an upside: Men don't care what you get them, either. They're like dogs, just happy with whatever. Get them a new drill or something and a month later they'll probably forget where it came from. Living with an emotionally stunted yeti has its advantages.

But Actually ...

Men get tied up in emotional knots when they get a gift -- they find expressing gratitude to be more complex and uncertain than women do, and for men it's tinged with more internal conflict. Men have been so hammered with ideas of detached masculinity that saying "thank you" carries emotional baggage that's normally reserved for interactions involving genitals.

While women can (usually) accept a gift as simply someone trying to be kind, a man's reaction is more, "Oh God, now I need to get something in return or I'll look like an ass. Life would be much simpler if nobody gave me anything." There's a reason Scrooge isn't a woman. Yes, the reason is that Victorian England allowed women to make exactly jack shit, so that would've been totally unrealistic, but we're going to shoehorn "men hate gifts" in as a reason for the purposes of this article.

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So yes, ladies, you may have spent weeks hunting down the perfect anniversary present for your man while he got you jack shit, but he's not actually the bad guy here. The internal struggle he experiences when he opens his present is part of an emotional cocktail that tends to ruin his overall happiness. You should be ashamed of yourselves, ladies.

Everyone loves stories about couples who are as much in love after 50 years as they were back when they had complete control of their bladders. The ultimate goal of marriage is to be snuggled up to the same person, decade after decade, until your genitals wither and your partner's once supple flesh is scrunched up raisin-like beneath your arthritic palms. Old-people couples are cute, is what we're saying.

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We'd like to think that if you spend all of your life with someone, you'll eventually know them even better than you know yourself. These beacons of companionship can basically read each other's minds, so if there is one exception to the "don't guess on the gift" rule above, it's these old farts.

But Actually ...

Psychologists from the University of Basel in Switzerland did a study with two groups of couples -- one group consisting of couples who had been together for an average of about two years, and the other old-timers who'd been married for over 40 years. The couples were presented with a number of items, including food, movies, and kitchen designs (buying someone a kitchen equals instant lay). Then they were asked to rate each prospective gift from 1 to 4 based on what they liked, and then again based on what they thought their partner would like. (You can never go wrong with Boba Fett-shaped robes, right?)

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Surprisingly, the younger couples did a better job predicting what their lovers would be into. The older couples incorrectly tended to think their other half would like the same things they liked. Scientists aren't entirely sure why the older people stopped listening to each other after 40 years, but it might have something to do with the fact they'd been listening to each other for 40 goddamn years.

The researchers suggest that couples that have been together that long might just constantly lie to each other to keep the other person happy, or it might be that their generation is one that never put much stock in married couples talking to each other in the first place. But don't take that the wrong way -- the older couples reported more satisfaction with their relationships overall, suggesting that taking any notice of the other person's interests is probably a complete waste of time anyway.

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