On Gifts, Looking Glasses and an Identity Crisis

This is not another story about gift giving.

Alert readers will recall we previously cautioned gift givers that their expensive offering could cause people to become suspicious of their motives. We also reported on an intriguing study that showed the moral satisfaction you get by giving a charitable gift is actually lost on the recipient — they don’t feel that same warm glow and would rather have more control over the donation.

Now it’s time to show some love to those receiving a gift — to consider how a present can trigger a train of thought that subconsciously upends how people view themselves.

When it comes to gift giving and receiving, there is almost always subtext. Givers have thoughts about recipients or even a message they want to convey, and recipients make inferences of givers’ intentions. 

This subtext got a team of marketing researchers wondering whether the inferences drawn by recipients – accurate or not – could alter one’s self-identity. If gifted a house cleaning service, might you infer that the gift giver sees you as a slob, and then start believing that yourself?

While it might seem like a stretch, a well-documented phenomenon known as the looking-glass self – the idea that how we come to know ourselves is, in part, guided by how we think others view us – supports the notion.

A gifted identity

To test their hypotheses, the research team — Laurence Ashworth and Nicole Robitaille of Smith School of Business and Suzanne Rath of University of Prince Edward Island — conducted five studies.

They first conducted a two-part survey of 565 individuals, five days before Christmas and five days after. The results showed that people’s identities did indeed change after receiving their Christmas gifts.

Next, they conducted a scenario experiment involving 131 students who were told they would receive a “party favour” from a fictional host — a gift selected just for them, or by random draw. This study confirmed that the notion of the gift, rather than receiving the same item by chance, was what changed recipients’ identity.

The third scenario-based experiment with 402 participants further revealed the perceived information that gifts convey about how the giver sees the giftee is what affects recipients’ identity. When gifts did not convey anything about how the giver viewed the recipient (perhaps because the gift reflected the givers’ own tastes), recipients’ identity wasn’t affected.

In the research’s final studies, the focus was on when information about givers’ views of recipients influences giftee’s identity and whether the changes to identity could affect their purchase behaviour.

One of these studies, conducted with 338 students, showed that recipients were more likely to change their identity to match the gift when they perceived the identity to be desirable. Undesirable identities tied to a gift (think of a sweater branded with the name of a university you don’t like) were rejected.

The other study was more complex. Participants received an actual item – either as part of their compensation for participating in the study (that is, not a gift), or as a gift from their fellow study partner. The item participants received was the same in both cases—a lanyard branded with the logo and name of the local professional football team. Participants also received $5 for taking part in the study and were given the option to use that money to purchase $1 raffle tickets to see the same local professional football team as featured on the lanyard. How much money they spent on raffle tickets was used as the measure of purchase behaviour. 

The results confirmed that participants were more likely to identify with the local football team when they received the lanyard as a gift rather than part of their compensation for participating. They were also more likely to purchase raffle tickets.

The consumption connection

Of particular interest to marketing professionals, the final study demonstrated that gift-related changes to identity influenced recipients’ willingness to purchase products that were consistent with that identity. Thus, encouraging people to give your branded products as gifts may be a way to increase purchasing among recipients.

The idea that gifts can convey information about givers’ views of recipients and that this information can influence how people view themselves adds another layer to the story of identity and gift giving. As the researchers note, identity has typically been considered relevant to gift giving as a cause of givers’ choices and recipients’ reactions.

“For example,” they write, “gifting research finds that givers sometimes select gifts that reflect aspects of their own identity and recipients are generally more appreciative of gifts that align with their identity. Our reasoning raises the possibility that identity can also be an important outcome of gift receipt.”

As with any good study, this one raises unanswered questions: How long do these effects last? What causes recipients to perceive gifts to be relevant to their identity in the first place? Can givers’ views of recipients ever be threatening if recipients don’t like what the gift implies? Might people cope in such situations by reasserting aspects of their current identity, leading to a “backfire” effect? The researchers offer these provocative questions as gifts to their colleagues to unwrap at a later date.