How Poor Gifts Affect Relationships

In this Psyblog, it talks about how good and bad Christmas gifts may affect relationships. The first study takes men and women who have just known each other for four minutes and asks them to pick out a gift certificate from a list for the other person. Here's the catch, each participant has ranked the gift certificates from their favorite to their least favorite. Well, some of the participants were told that their acquaintance chose the same favorite gift card, while others were told that their acquaintance chose their least favorite gift card. This resulted in people receiving good gifts and bad gifts. The men were the most affected by this, when they got the good gift they were happy and felt like there was a similarity between them and their acquaintance and the opposite when it was bad gift. The women didn't really have a response. They felt the same way given either situation. The second study focused on already established relationships to see what the affect would be. It was the same circumstances with different results. When the men received the good gifts they felt a stronger connection to the person they were in a relationship with and felt the relationship would last longer, however when given the bad gift they didn't feel a connection or as strong of one and therefore thought the relationship wouldn't last. The women felt a strong similarity to their significant other when the gift was good, but when the gift was bad they still felt a connection and still thought the relationship would last. The study shows that women felt threatened by the poor gift and used their defense mechanisms to hold on to their relationship. These results are short term reactions, therefore later on the relationships might end due to a bad gift. So basically, the article states that if you are in relationship, getting the right Christmas gift is important. I found this to be interesting because I had no idea how important getting the right gift could be, and this just puts more stress and pressure to find the perfect gift.