For the most part, it really is the thought that counts with gifts

McClatchy Newspapers

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Most everyone knows the lesson of love and sacrifice told in “The Gift of the Magi.”

An impoverished young husband sells his treasured pocket watch to buy his wife a comb for her luxuriant hair. She shears off and sells her hair to buy him a gold chain for his watch.

But new research indicates they probably could have gotten each other a coffee pot.

When it comes to appreciating a gift, a psychological study at Stanford University bears out what Mama always said and cheapskates love to hear:

It’s the thought, not price, that matters.

“In a holiday setting, you can imagine how people are really worried about disappointing those they care about — getting them something they really want, something that costs a bit more,” psychologist Francis Flynn said. “That is not going to make them happier. People are going to be delighted, not disappointed, in the gifts they get.”

OK, a caveat. Women shopping for boyfriends might first want to read Experiment No. 5.

UExperiment No. 1: Give me a ring sometime

At Stanford, Flynn and his graduate student co-author, Gabrielle Adams, wrote up three experiments on gift appreciation in the November online version of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

In the first, they looked at engagement rings. They recruited 33 men and women who were engaged but not to each other.

The women rated their appreciation for their rings. The men were asked how pleased they thought their fianc es were with their rings. The buyers of really costly rings expected the women to be really excited. Bummer. Their ladies rated their level of appreciation no higher than those getting cheaper stones.

UExperiment No. 2: Thanks for nothing

Then came the 237 people surveyed about a birthday gift they’d either recently given or received.

Again they ranked their appreciation for items ranging from CDs to wine to expensive jewelry. Givers consistently expected more expensive presents to garner more appreciation.

Nope. They were appreciated, but so were smaller gifts.

UExperiment No. 3: Appease in the iPods

In Stanford’s “iPod” study, 197 subjects had to imagine a hypothetical scenario.

Half were to think they were attending a high school graduation and, as the gift-givers, were giving someone either a CD or an iPod.

The other half were to imagine they were the grads and gift-getters.

Again, the imaginary iPod was expected to be the hotter gift. Again, it came out nearly even with the much cheaper CD.

UExperiment No. 4: This doesn’t quite fit

Don’t choose too poorly, warned researcher Janetta Lun, a psychologist at the University of Virginia.

She was one of the authors on a study titled “The Gift of Similarity: How Good and Bad Gifts Influence Relationships” in September’s Social Cognition.

They partnered 31 male and 31 female undergraduate students who were strangers to each other and asked them to chitchat for about four minutes.

Later, the students separately were told they could win any one of 11 gift certificates to stores, from Barnes & Noble to J.C. Penney.

They were asked to pick out something for the partner. But the researchers fibbed to the partners about the gifts chosen for them. Half got lousy gifts, half got great gifts.

The test question: How similar do you think you are to your partner?

Men: Gift quality made all the difference.

Women: It didn’t matter.

UExperiment No. 5: Oh, you shouldn’t have!

A repeat, but with romantic couples — and a provocative wrinkle.

“We asked them two questions,” Lun said. “How much longer do you think you will date? What is the likelihood that you and your partner will get married?”

Men: Those who got the bad gifts tended to rate their partners as more dissimilar. They also said the chances were greater that they would break up or not get married.

Women: It was the opposite. The worse the gift, the more similar they rated their partners and more likely they said it was that they would stay together or get married.