Gift-giving is an integral part of social life, as we communicate to others that we care about them and want them to have the things they love. Despite the heavy emphasis on the monetary exchange of gifts in the United States in particular, successful gift-giving doesn’t require you to go into debt every time a holiday, wedding, birthday, or work-related event comes around. The psychological meaning of a gift is just as important, if not more so, than its monetary value.
However, as much as people may express this opinion, it’s not always easy to come up with gift ideas that will delight the recipient. The problem is that when people go shopping for someone else, they do so with their preferences and desires in mind. Do you like jewelry? If so, chances are your gifts will be made of silver or gold, and crafted in a style that suits your taste. Are you a chocolate addict? It’s probably a safe bet that your gifts will come from the nearest Godiva store.
We often buy things for others that reflect our likes and dislikes. Whether a gift is successful or not depends on whether our tastes match those of the recipient. For a diehard sports fan, a jersey with the hometown team’s logo will be appreciated, but for an art lover, the same gift will quickly go to the gift basket. So using yourself as a gift-buying guide is a risky proposition unless you and the recipient truly share a set of values and preferences.
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The people who are most likely to give gifts that they want are those who have the most difficulty seeing the world through the recipient’s eyes. In psychological terms, the worst gift-givers are likely to be the ones who are highest in narcissistic personality traits, especially the empathy component of narcissism.
Other traits of narcissism can interfere with successful gift-giving. The same feelings of insecurity that can drive narcissists to want to outdo everyone else can also drive them to want to make their gifts as expensive as possible, regardless of whether they fit the recipient’s needs and desires. For example, at a wedding, those high in narcissism will want to make sure not only that they have bought the most expensive things but also that everyone is aware of how much they have spent.
In its most extreme form, this kind of ostentatious narcissism can also cause people to go off the list when people who are getting married or having a baby specifically ask for certain household items they need. How many times have you been annoyed when you asked for practical things for your home, only to open a beautifully wrapped box of useless but expensive items like silver tea trays or fragile crystal baby rattles? It’s possible that your gift givers genuinely intended to please you, but there’s always the possibility that they just wanted to please themselves.
It may come as no surprise to you that this is a fairly understudied area of psychology. There are, of course, a wealth of scientific studies on narcissism, but none that specifically explore the angle of what people high in narcissism do when it comes time to give gifts.
In a promising study by University of Wisconsin Oshkosh psychologist David Leshner and colleagues (2015), the relationship between narcissism, psychopathy, borderline personality traits, and the ability to feel empathy for others was examined. You wouldn’t expect psychopaths to be able to feel other people’s emotions, and Leshner et al.’s study confirmed this hypothesis. In fact, the type of emotional callousness exhibited by people high in psychopathy was closely linked to their inability to experience other people’s emotions. However, narcissism itself showed no particular relationship to emotional empathy.
However, the type of empathy required to be a good gift giver is as much motivational as it is emotional. You need to be able to see what others need and want if you want your gifts to be a hit. Australian psychologist Peter Jonasson teamed up with Christopher Kroll (2015) to examine how narcissism, along with the other Dark Triad traits of psychopathy, predicts and manipulates different components of empathy.
Somewhat surprisingly, Jonason and Kroll found that people high in narcissism were quite good at understanding the pain or distress of others. However, this positive trait must be understood in terms of the overall exploitative way in which people high in narcissism view others. As the authors note, “The ability to understand the pain of others may help the narcissist better relate to others and even take advantage of them (p. 154).” We can conclude that at least some people high in narcissism can read others, but using them does not help them out of their pain.
Now, returning to the question of how someone high in narcissism can become a good gift-giver, these five tips seem to emerge from the literature:
Try to tap into the recipient’s values and needs. What you like won’t necessarily be what others like, so force yourself to see them (and you) in a realistic way.
Examine your reasons for giving the gift. Are you trying to make yourself look more successful by spending more money than everyone else, or are you driven by genuine altruistic instincts?
Remember gifts that worked and those that didn’t. Maybe you made what you thought was a beautiful needlepoint picture that never made it onto the recipient’s walls. Instead of feeling hurt or ignored, realize that not everyone has space on their walls or prefers handmade gifts.
Join others in group gifting. Don’t view every gift-giving occasion as an opportunity to outdo everyone else. If everyone contributes a gift card, just join the group, even if it means you don’t get individual recognition.
Don’t over-expect thanks. A narcissist’s feelings of entitlement can translate into anger at not receiving enough gratitude from the recipient. If you feel offended by the recipient’s (in your opinion) lack of gratitude, this will only create ill will on future gift-giving occasions.
Enjoying the gifts we share with others means that giving is as rewarding as receiving. You will enjoy the gifts you give more when the exchange meets the recipient’s needs more than your own.
