Christmas Presents
Why is it so hard to choose presents?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Chris Wragg, Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing Christmas presents. So it's come up to that lovely time of year, it's Christmas is on its way, Chris tell
Speaker B:us about your Christmas shopping and your presents that you're choosing. Yeah well so for me Christmas present shopping is not a nice experience as I'm sure it is for lots of other people that it's something that we dread and one of the problems that I have about Christmas shopping is that today you can buy virtually anything so that the choice is almost infinite but people also have a large number of things and almost everything they actually require and it's becoming increasingly difficult to select presents for people. Not only that you're sort of judged on your ability to select presents for something, it's somehow seen as a reflection of your understanding of that person, your love for that person and it can create enormous sort of disappointment or dissatisfaction on both sides and it's bad enough having to do that for one person at a time but to have to do it for your entire family in one go simultaneously it is an enormous cognitive burden and one which I've been thinking about how I might alleviate. So let's get some nice generative strategy that will just work from
Speaker A:here. You're in the right place, we're on the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, it's Aleph Insights, this is exactly the kind of thing that we deal with. So let's get some facts here, who do you need to
Speaker B:buy presents for? Well generally it's family members. Does that include all the Austrian
Speaker C:Von Hohenschmergen? No, they're outside. One of my great problems about
Speaker B:Christmas presents and present buying in general but Christmas presents is the rules aren't written down anywhere and in fact one of the rules, the one sort of definite criteria about Christmas presents is that nothing can be explicit about it because somehow it's this test of how well you know people. So even knowing who to buy for and how much to spend on them and all of those kinds of issues are... Me and 500 pounds please. But hold on, I'm confused because
Speaker A:you're married right? Yes. Why do you get involved in any of this? Surely your wife does all this stuff, no? There's only one present you've got to get which is for your wife, that's the only one that matters, she does everything else right? Meanwhile in the 21st century
Speaker B:there are a series of sort of challenges that you have to you have to meet you know because the thing about presents is they can't be utilitarian right? You can't just buy somebody or at least it's not well regarded if you buy somebody you know if they if they spend their most of their time doing domestic work and you buy them an apron or something, not good move. It can't be already possessed by them right? So you can't give them something they've already got. It's got to be as I said it's got to be the right price if you if somebody buys you a really expensive present and you buy them a cheap piece of crap again not not good and this has all got to be achieved you know without explicit communication of somebody saying please buy me this thing because this is this is what I want and it's you know never mind the Turing test, this is the true test of well in fact it certainly eludes me you know of sort of analytical perfection. Yeah it's a minefield, let's help
Speaker D:him out Peter. Well it might help if we explore why you give presents. So I think there are sort of three different and competing reasons why you might give someone a present. One is just to demonstrate pure selfless love and I suppose that's what people most want to receive a present for but actually most of the time when you give presents it's usually for either some sort of social exchange indicating you have a certain wealth or that you're able to buy somebody something or that you know things about the person that they might like so you can win favour with them or it's economic exchange so it's you did something for me I'm going to give you something in return that's sort of of approximate value so that there's some sort transaction going on there. So I think it's the sort of competing the idealist view of oh well we give presents at Christmas to demonstrate selfless love when actually it's almost always about social exchange it's about sort of doing favours for each other and gaining brownie points within
Speaker A:the social within your social clique. Just to cut in at this point I got a really nice Christmas present last year I think it was. If you're listening this is a hint. Well it's actually Peter Coghill got me a Christmas present. Was it entirely practical? It was yeah you got me because one of the things I struggle with sometimes with these podcasts is is supplying power to our recording to our to our mics and so you got me some extra long cable extensions. Well this is
Speaker D:where I want to take issue with Chris's point that it doesn't it can be entirely practical if it's a practical thing that the person really really wants and they may not necessarily notice that they want. I mean personally I'd be delighted if someone just bought me my year's supply of toilet paper or something that would be brilliant then I wouldn't have to buy toilet paper.
Speaker A:That's one toilet roll for Peter. But actually what was interesting actually is you got it for me because you could see the practical purpose for it and sure enough every time we record podcasts I use them however actually what made me which is very pleased to get them was actually the fact that you did it and I was just so it was just such a nice surprise and that that's what sort of did
Speaker C:it for me really the thoughtfulness of it. There we go. Right Peter purely practical Coghill came back from his holiday to Nepal recently with a present for me which was a a karma generator which you can put on the windowsill and it's solar powered and the thing rotates and it generates
Speaker D:karma according to buddhists. But on a very practical level it generates a lot of of humor.
Speaker C:No but it's also I've used that karma now it's useful yeah yeah. But I think this this sort of
Speaker B:boils down to one of the there's a psychologist Professor Karen Pine who a few years ago produced a formula for perfect present purchasing and it's a formula in the looser sense of the words in the if you try to mathematically carry it out it would be meaningless but nevertheless it's the components of what makes a perfect a perfect presence. I'm going to read this out but I think it pertains quite nicely to one of Peter's seeming successors. So it's listening times two plus observation and that's where Peter comes in he observes what people require or need plus effort squared so the more effort you you put into choosing it the more the more it'll be received even if it's the same the same present as somebody else bought if they just you know got it from amazon or something. Minus personal desire so apparently we studies have shown we massively overestimate our own preferences in present buying for other people so and that we know what they want and that it's like what we want so you have to take that out of the equation plus empathy which for me as a sort of borderline clinical psychopath is the most difficult part. How's that different from listening? Well the listening is like you know picking up on the queues where Fraser was hinting about what he wants for Christmas next year you know even
Speaker C:longer power cables. Yeah I think this this seems like a big pile of old balls. So how's that different? Why is effort squared? Effort would be a logistic function surely because at some
Speaker B:point the return to effort. It was a marketing exercise on behalf of Debenhams. Well if you want
Speaker C:there is some proper science about presents which is i.e. not psychology but economics where we there's a famous a famous paper called the deadweight loss of Christmas by an economist called Vald Fergal rather I think fitting into the into the caricature of the gloomy money obsessed economist tried to measure how much of a loss Christmas was in terms of the presents we give to each other and so the the observation that an economist would naturally make is you know if I buy something for you for 20 pounds all it can be is as good as the thing that you would have bought for 20 pounds if it's anything else is going to be worth less to you than 20 pounds would be. Simple observation and he estimated that about 10 to 30 percent of the value of a present is lost through the fact that I bought it for you instead of just giving you the money. So in other words if I buy you a present for 10 pounds broadly it's going to be something that you would probably only have spent seven to nine pounds on so it's basically this huge loss and we spend on average and this surprised me perhaps it shouldn't have done but we spend on average around about sort of 500 pounds or so each each per year on Christmas presents which means that we're chucking away about 100 pounds a year through through Christmas but I think all of this neglects the reason we give presents and it's what we've all been touching on and it's our old friend signalling theory which is that the reason we give people presents is because it's a way of showing that we do understand them and the fact that Chris is experiencing cognitive torment about it is precisely the point so the whole the whole way that you can tell whether someone who's given you a present gives a shit about you or not is whether or not it's the right present so someone who buys you socks clearly doesn't either spend very much time listening to you or paying attention or caring about you somebody buys you exactly that widget you wanted for your bike is obviously is does care a lot about you and is listening to you because you can't you can't fake it that's the beauty of it getting someone the right present is impossible to fake you the only way you can buy someone the right present is precisely by being the kind of person who would buy them the right present so I think you know it's it's pretty much explained yes it's wasteful it's costly and it's that is actually often the point of signals is that they are costly you know if they were free it was free to send a signal then it wouldn't be a signal because everyone would send that signal
Speaker A:but now I'm just depressed because my mum gets me socks every every year she hates you she probably
Speaker B:barely knows your name yeah do you like socks though because I actually I have to say you know I've noticed the quality of socks over the years has gone down quite a lot and so actually you need a new stock of socks about once a year do you mean the socks that mrs wragg is buying you
Speaker C:have got worse over the year because that's important that we need to talk about it no so
Speaker B:the the the you know uk sort of blue ribbon brand that provides socks uh for for men of my age um i've noticed the quality of their their socks has deteriorated over the years but yes I mean
Speaker C:there's no doubt about it you need new socks and pants each year I would I never buy them I only
Speaker D:get given them it could also be the quality of your feet has deteriorated which means
Speaker A:it's possible they've got more angular yeah um okay look I know this might come as a surprise actually we're fairly close to needing to to wrap up I do want to say though I've got something
Speaker C:just an observation from my own family yeah and it's interesting Chris obviously has quite a demanding family in terms of what they are expecting by the sound of it Peter comes from a present culture which is different I had two halves of my two halves of my family my mum's side and my dad's side uh very different present cultures now my mum's side Lincolnshire uh farming uh very much focuses on efficiency and you know making every drop of effort count we have Christmas lists we there's there's there's me and there's my mum and there's her three sausage machine exactly all the things that the proper uh fensman needs and uh and so the the um I look after my mum's Christmas list she uh looks after my Christmas bits of my Christmas list and then you know uh all of the siblings have another Christmas list to look after and we just choose a thing from that list and then we go and buy that thing and everyone's happy on Christmas morning we all get we've all kind of forgotten what we've asked for whereas on my dad's side Irish peasantry uh is uh well second generation say third generation um very much more of a less much less transactional much more communal and sharing any kind of uh atmosphere where it would be considered very mercenary to give someone a Christmas list and people just go out usually and buy some some something pretty inappropriate usually the two of them will buy you the same thing usually there's one of them will buy you a thing that they bought you last year and it really is like the thought that counts not the end result so I think you know it's not so much that there's a right way of doing it but it's just you there's gonna be the right way of doing it for
Speaker D:your particular family culture um and uh Peter go on Peter well just uh maybe to finish off one thing you can definitely get right though is wrap it so wrapping presents according to tests looking at the sort of perceived value and perceived sort of uh effort gone in for present wrapping it is one very quick win doesn't matter how badly it's done what about professional
Speaker B:wrapping well of course that wouldn't be perceived with the same with the same value would it well
Speaker D:maybe but at least at least it is wrapped you've taken the time all the money to wrap it that's a very quick win to up your your the the term that's squared in your equation Chris is it the yeah the the I forget what it was oh yes um yeah but if that was totally true if it really was squared
Speaker C:you should wrap everything multiple times yeah sorry there is one more tiny piece of very practical advice you can give to people which is based on behavioral economics so it's finding from sort of psychology of uh perceived value don't give someone an expensive present and a small and an inexpensive present together right because people perceive the value of a bundle as being the average value of the bundle so if you give someone a 500 pound handbag and a five pounds gift voucher they'll see it as broadly worth about 250 quid give it to them separately don't don't give people presents together for god's sake people yeah it sounds also like you're speaking from you know horrible experience well yes i mean i mean i think it it is uh but but it you know it's been borne out in studies you you ask people do they want would they rather have a uh you know a a set of five um of six uh plates that are completely undamaged or a set of 10 damaged plates and 10 undamaged ones they would rather have the one that where there are no damaged plates even though there are fewer damaged ones so so yes so basically you know unbundle your presents guys
Speaker A:right that's good job you told me that um now uh let's just finish this off um i'm not going to ask what you might think i just want to ask what's the best present that you've ever bought for someone else that you've ever given to someone else so um who's whoever's ready can go well usb cables and karma generators i think they've totally nailed it there yeah there we go so well i guess the question is what you think is the best or what was the best received as well that's the other sort of flip side of it uh chris best present you've
Speaker B:ever given uh there's the time i bought my grandmother the millennium falcon um right the actual millennium falcon or not the real millennium falcon no the the model of the
Speaker C:model of the millennium falcon okay um nick this is really hard i mean i i got a big family as well so i you know every year it's quite it's quite a lot of presents um but i i think the uh i think i would go by longevity of thing uh and it was like a knickknack like a set of six bells on a kind of christmas tree shaped thing that one year i thought i think i must have been about 12 i thought my granny might like and it's still there sitting on the sideboard even though my granny has passed away uh it's still there on the sideboard of knickknacks so you know i feel like that's that could well be the longest lasting present i've got which is still in use as a as a
Speaker B:knickknack i've still got the millennium falcon i bought for my granny by the way she must be so
Speaker A:pleased um yeah i can't think i don't buy that many presents so which actually should make it easier for me to remember um i can only remember the last present that i bought which was for my
Speaker C:wife last year well you're only as good as the last present you bought so what was it so it was
Speaker A:one of those um usb cables it was one of those dna test kits which tells you where you're from
Speaker C:and well i actually was i was really disappointed actually so now just for the uh listeners um fraser's wife has got quite an interesting genetic lineage or so i thought because uh so she's
Speaker A:brazilian um and she's got um lots of indigenous blood she can look quite indigenous and i thought she'd be this mix of all sorts of exotic stuff from all over the place um turns out she's from dagadan you're saying that's not exotic it turns out she's 50 iberian okay uh which okay that's reasonably sort of you know but i i was expecting that to be about five percent oh but that's funny
Speaker C:it means all the jumbling up has ended up i mean it's probably a 50 from all kinds of bits of the iberian peninsula yeah and presumably the other 50 is bits of south america well no actually so
Speaker A:she's only something like two or three percent indigenous really um and bizarrely she's about two or three percent british so how the hell that happened unless someone's been rubbing off from me i don't i don't think that's how it works but i'm not a scientist apparently it does work like that a little bit um but that's a whole other that's a whole other podcast no it does apparently it does work it does that does happen um we're going off on something else um okay look let's stop there um that's enough uh to do with christmas so no just what was the other bit that leaves about 40 percent oh um she was slightly african okay um slightly other bits of europe um yeah i think that must be it yeah no that makes sense yeah yeah so that was it so anyway that was a great christmas present but actually i was actually quite disappointed by it all for about
Speaker D:undermine your your relationship with her that you sort of dispelled this it did for about herself
Speaker A:it did for a bit and then i just forgot about it all and i realized it didn't really mean much um okay so well you know um we're going to finish there um but you've been listening to the podcast i'm fraser mcgrew been here with nick hair peter coghill and chris rag of aleph insights um thank you for listening happy christmas and just be careful what you buy for each other okay uh thank you and goodbye bye
