Ask and You Shall (Not) Receive: Close Friends Prioritize Relational Signalling Over Recipient Preferences in Their Gift Choices

Imagine your birthday is approaching and a friend asks you what you want as a birthday gift. You consider for a moment, then tell your friend exactly what you want. When your birthday arrives, does your friend present you with the gift you suggested or an alternative item that s/he has chosen especially for you? This familiar scenario brings to light the persistent tension in communal relationships between the opposing forces of behaving altruistically (doing things that benefit the other without concern for oneself) versus egoistically (responding to others’ needs to ensure one’s own relationship needs) (Clark and Mills 1993; Batson 1987; Sherry 1983). In the context of gift gifting, givers may select gifts altruistically, resulting in the choice of an item that matches the recipient’s expressed preferences, or egoistically, resulting in the choice of an item that allows the giver to demonstrate his/her knowledge of the recipient, thereby signaling the relationship. In the context of a gift registry we consider the difference between how close versus distant friends manage these conflicting goals as prior research has identified social closeness to account for many of the differences in gifting behavior (Belk 1976; Gino and Flynn 2010; Ward and Broniarczyk 2011). One might expect a close friend, who is particularly concerned with the needs of the recipient, to choose altruistically an item that satisfies the recipient’s explicitly expressed preferences. However, we show that close (vs. distant) givers are also more sensitive to the social and interpersonal expectations that underlie gift exchanges and are likely to choose egoistically instead.