There is a widespread belief that women are better at selecting gifts than men; however, this claim has not been assessed on the basis of objective criteria. The current studies do exactly that and show that women do indeed make better gift selections for others, regardless of the gender of the receiver and the type of relationship between the giver and receiver. We investigate the mediating role of different aspects of interpersonal sensitivity and reveal that differences in interpersonal interest (measured with an autism questionnaire), but not differences in interpersonal reactivity, explain gender differences in gift selection quality. The current studies thus present the first objective evidence for the claim that women are better in selecting gifts for others and also give an indication of why this is the case.

Introduction

Gift giving is a universal phenomenon in almost every human culture. Every year, billions of dollars are spent on birthday and holiday gifts. It is estimated that roughly 10% of all sales at GAFO-type stores concern gifts for others [1]. Although meant as a sign of love or appreciation, not all gifts are valued as much as the giver wishes for [2]. Given the difficulty in selecting the perfect gift, it is important to investigate predictors of successful gift giving. One of the factors that is likely to play an important role in gift giving is the giver's gender. Women are thought to be the primary gift givers because they are more concerned about expressing love than men [3]. From this follows the widespread belief that women are better gift-givers than men [4]. But is this really the case, and if so, why? The current study investigates whether women are better at selecting gifts than men and investigates possible explanations for this effect.

The importance of good gift selection Given its universal nature, it is not surprising that gift giving has been studied from several different angles [5], [6], [7], [8]. It serves important interpersonal functions because gifts can help build and reformulate personal relationships [9], [10] and promote the giver's happiness [11]. However, gifts do not always have positive consequences. A recent experimental study showed that bad gifts can actually harm one's relationship [12]. In this study, romantic partners were led to believe that the other partner had selected a gift for them that either fit their preferences quite well or rather badly. Men who received bad gifts subsequently perceived less similarity with their partner and predicted their relationship would end sooner than men who received good gifts. Thus, prior research has established that gift giving benefits the giver, benefits the receiver, and benefits the relationship, but that these effects depend on receiving the appropriate gift. It is therefore surprising that the conditions under which people select the right or the wrong gift are understudied. In this set of studies, we focus on the objective quality of gift selection by comparing the preferences of a recipient with the actual selection of the giver. Note that we acknowledge that the evaluation of gifts can be influenced by other factors such as the relationship with the giver or the recipient's emotional state. However, everything being equal, we believe that a better match between preferences and selection is an objective indication of higher gift quality. Moreover, another benefit of this measure is that cannot be influenced by the hindsight of the recipient.

Gender difference in gift selection Are men or women better in selecting the right gift? Although no study so far has objectively tested whether women are better gift givers than men, there are some studies showing that women are more involved in gift giving than men. For example, [13] interviewed men and women about their Christmas shopping behavior and found that women report buying gifts for a greater number of recipients, starting shopping earlier, and spending more time per recipient when buying gifts. What is more, women estimate that 10 percent of the gifts they give are returned by the recipient, whereas men estimate that 16 percent of the gifts they give are returned. Based on these numbers, one can infer that women think that they are more successful gift-givers. However, self-reported skills do not always predict actual skills. For example, people's self-indicated ability to know and understand others' intentions and personality is often unrelated to actual levels of knowledge and understanding [14], [15]. Thus, whether women's self-reported superiority is based on selecting gifts that are actually has yet to be tested.

Interpersonal interest or interpersonal reactivity? If women are better at selecting gifts than men, what are possible explanations for this difference? We think that gender differences in interpersonal sensitivity are relevant in the gift-giving context. There are two factors that contribute to interpersonal sensitivity: (1) one needs to have interest in other people (interpersonal interest) and (2) one needs to be able to take the perspective of others (interpersonal reactivity). To the extent that a person is interested in other people and able to effectively take another person's perspective, they should better be able to predict a target's gift preferences. We measure the first aspect, interpersonal interest, with the autism spectrum quotient (AQ) [16]. A key aspect of this questionnaire is that it captures the degree to which people care about social interactions relative to non-social interactions (e.g., ‘I enjoy social events’, ‘I feel more attracted to people than to objects’ (reverse coded)). In general, reduced interest in socially relevant information is an important aspect of autism spectrum disorder [17], [18] and prior research has established that autistic traits are normally distributed among the general population [19]. Highly relevant for the current research question, even in non-clinical samples men have more autistic traits than women [16], [20], suggesting that interpersonal interest may be a possible explanation for potential gender differences in quality gift selections. We therefore predict that men have reduced social interest, as measured by the AQ, which can explain potential gender differences in gift selection quality. The second aspect of interpersonal sensitivity we include in this study is interpersonal reactivity, which we measure with the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI) [21]. This scale captures the extent to which one feels empathy and engages in perspective taking. Women tend to score significantly higher than men on this scale, that is, they say that they feel more empathy towards others and are more likely to take the perspective of others [22]. If one is successful in taking the perspective of others, it should be easier to select a good gift for that person, that is why we hypothesize that interpersonal reactivity could also mediate the relationship between gender and gift selection quality.

Better gift selection through similarity? Another reason why women think they are better in selecting gifts than men may be that there are simply more gift exchanges between women and women know better what other women want. Caplow [23] found that women are more often the giver but also more often the receiver of a gift. Thus, the majority of gift exchanges are in female-female dyads. As a consequence, women who are asked about their gift giving qualities will be more likely to remember a female-female gift exchange than men are likely to remember a male-male gift exchange. We know from research on preference prediction that predictions for similar others tend to be more accurate than predictions for dissimilar others [24]. It could therefore be the case that women are better at selecting gifts because they give more same-gender gifts than men. We will therefore also investigate whether people are especially good in selecting gifts for someone of the same gender.