Gift giving and Dissonance
When I design something new, I try to imagine a close friend giving it to me as a gift. While I think products that you yourself love make the best presents, there’s more to gift giving than an exchange of goods. I think of it as a material way to mediate the dissonance that exists in every relationship.
Receiving an object as a gift rather than buying it for yourself drastically changes the object’s meaning. As I wrote in my post about charcoal toothpaste, everyday products are sponges for meaning. A gift comes with a built-in story, a communication about your relationship to the giver that will color every interaction you have with the object. Like every product, the more practical the gift, the more you’ll consider its function, rather than its underlying story. That might be why money is rarely given as a gift, except to children – it’s so practical that it leaves no room for this communicative kind of narrative.
Like the difference in air pressure on either side of a ship’s sails, gift giving maintains a productive asymmetry in a relationship. The imbalance isn’t just a monetary one, although the gift’s value factors in; it’s more an expectation that the receiver’s gift will communicate as much investment and insight into the relationship as the giver’s gift. This is where gift dissonance comes in: since gift giving is a communication that reveals the giver’s conception of the receiver and the relationship, to accept a gift is to accept an identity. The more specific the gift is to the receiver, the more dissonance is created during the exchange.
This dissonance can be positive or negative. If a friend gives you a gift that doesn’t fit with your identity – a vase, although they’ve never seen flowers at your house, for example- you’ll be forced to either take your friend less seriously or change your self-concept to match your friend’s. You could also refuse the gift, but most people go with the first option. If your friend surprises you with a gift that’s so specific to who you are and is something you actually want to use, you’ll also experience dissonance- this time from the mismatch between how well you thought your friend knew you and how well they actually know you, as shown through their gift. To mitigate this dissonance, you’ll consider the giver a closer friend.
Fear of getting someone the wrong gift, and forcing them to mitigate the resulting dissonance by taking you less seriously, leads people to go with gifts that say very little- gift cards are the best example. However, safe gifts preclude the possibility of creating positive dissonance as well, which is why they make the worst gifts for close friends. The best gifts communicate the most information. My friend Jean has been writing about non-safe, wonderfully communicative gifts for the past week at Notcot. The core77 gift guide is a good source as well. And of course there’s my teapot.
photos via Pingmag
2 Comments
December 6th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
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December 6th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
This is such an interesting and enlightening post. I’ve always been uncomfortable with both giving and receiving gifts. On the giving end, there’s so much (self-created) pressure to get the “right” gift, and such elation in the rare instances when an inspired choice presents itself. On the receiving end, there’s the discomfort/disappointment that inevitably arises from the majority of gifts. Your analysis helps me understand some of the underlying reasons. Thanks.