Still, while gift-giving and gift-receiving can often lead to hopefulness and excitement, the lead up to giving a gift can bring on other emotions, including stress and anxiety, said Scott Rick, PhD, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “If you’re given a gift from someone who cares about you a lot and you really love what they have gotten you, that is going to yield a very similar oxytocin-laden reward response,” she said. The decades-long science around gift-giving suggests that giving and receiving may be pretty on par in terms of what happens in the brain, Simon-Thomas said. The whole experience of figuring out what to get for someone you love and simply anticipating being in the room with them while they open it activates those same reward pathways and is all part of the joy of gift-giving, she said. These effects on the brain are even present during various steps leading up to the actual opening of the gift, such as shopping for the gift and wrapping it, said Simon-Thomas, whose organization is focused on offering research-backed tools and tips for social-emotional well-being. When oxytocin is part of the equation, the reward is slightly different in that it can be sustained longer, unlike the brief lifespan that a pure dopamine response has. It’s often referred to as the ‘cuddle hormone.’” “But part of the uniqueness of the reward activation around gift-giving compared to something like receiving an award or winning money is that because it is social it also activates pathways in the brain that release oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide that signals trust, safety, and connection. “Oftentimes, people refer to it as the ‘ warm glow,’ this intrinsic delight in doing something for someone else,” said Simon-Thomas, who studies the neuroscience and psychology of compassion, kindness, and gratitude. They found that those who spent money on other people had more generous and fair interactions with other people and reported higher levels of happiness after the experiment was over. Then, they performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in the brain associated with generosity and pleasure during a social sharing task. In one study led by investigators at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, for example, researchers gave 50 people $100, and instructed half of them to spend it on themselves, and the other half to spend it on someone else over the next four weeks. That’s because when we behave generously-be it donating money to charity or giving a loved one something they really want for a holiday-it creates more interaction between the parts of the brain associated with processing social information and feeling pleasure. Several studies over the last decade have demonstrated that spending money on someone other than yourself promotes happiness. Turns out, gift-giving, particularly when the giftee is someone with whom we have a close relationship, activates key reward pathways in our brain, provided we don’t let stress take away the joy of the occasion, according to Emiliana Simon-Thomas, PhD, science director at the Greater Good Science Center, a research center at the University of California, Berkeley, that studies the roots of compassion, happiness, and altruism. But what exactly happens in your brain when you give a gift? And is the old saying really true, that “giving is better than receiving?” The holiday season is upon us, and with it, the hunt for the perfect gifts for family and friends.
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