How understanding personality types can help you make better gift choices
As we rapidly approach the holiday gift-giving season, anxiety levels are rising as people struggle with the “What should I get for ….?” question. A lot of that anxiety stems from not wanting to make bad gift choices. Here’s how you can use an understanding of personality type to help you avoid buying dud gifts. (Bonus — you can use it all year round, not just at Christmas time!)
As a human being yourself, you’ve probably noticed that other human beings have different personalities and that their personalities tend to correlate with the things they like to do and own.
But unless you’re a research psychologist, it’s unlikely you’ve taken the time to categorise those different personality types, much less consider how personality might, or could influence your choice of gifts for other people.
The good news is the hard work has already been done — at least when it comes to describing personalities. It takes a little more effort to extrapolate how to match gifts to different personalities.
This article is about bridging that gap.
How do we describe or categorise a person’s personality?
We all have our own ways of describing personality. We might refer to ourselves or others as reserved or outgoing, organised or random, hard-nosed or a ‘soft touch’. But these aren’t very universal terms and they’re often circumstantial.
In the psychology world, those in the know define personality in terms of how people tend to think, feel, and behave. And rather than try and put people in discrete boxes — for instance, describe people as an X, Y or Z — instead, psychologists talk in terms of independent ‘traits’ or characteristics that, in combination, make up the whole.
Each of these traits exist on a spectrum –rated from high to low. It’s a bit like a cake recipe where you change the quantities of the different ingredients. Change the ratio of ingredients and you change how the cake turns out.
In other words, you can’t really fit a group of people into a neat little box that defines their personality. Instead, what each of us has is a multi-dimensional ‘cloud’ of personality traits that is unique to the individual.
“Doesn’t that make personality type a blunt instrument when it comes to matching people to gifts?”; I hear you ask.
Well, yes and no.
An understanding of personality won’t necessarily point you to a specific gift item, but it will most certainly help steer you away from bad ideas and guide you towards safer ones.
Also on the plus side, there aren’t many personality traits that you need to wrap your head around.
The ‘Big Five’ personality traits
It’s generally accepted within the discipline of psychology that there are five key personality traits — known as The Big Five[1].
These traits (which can be remembered using the mnemonic; OCEAN) are:
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Openness refers to a person’s willingness to engage with new ideas or experiences. People who score high on the openness scale tend to enjoy new things and are often regarded as creative. People who score low on the openness scale prefer familiarity and routine and are less likely to try new things. Less open people also have a strong sense of right and wrong and tend to be conservative in their thinking.
Conscientiousness is very much as it sounds. Highly conscientious people are well organised, dependable, and usually very motivated to achieve. Less conscientious people are more easily distracted, less reliable and much less predictable.
Extraversion. We’re all familiar with how we describe people as extraverts and introverts. Extraverted people are ‘social butterflies’ who draw energy from other people. They enjoy relatively short interactions with a large variety of people, that is, they’re very sociable and don’t enjoy isolation. Introverted people prefer more prolonged or ‘meaningful’ interactions with a small number of people, avoid crowds and are much more comfortable with isolation. This doesn’t mean introverts are not sociable. It’s just that they’d typically prefer to go to a quiet dinner rather than a big party.
Agreeableness is about a person’s relative warmth, ability to empathise and preparedness to cooperate. Agreeable people are more likely to be trusting, helpful and compassionate. Disagreeable people tend to be suspicious of others, more egocentric and more inclined to “rock the boat”.
Neuroticism relates to a person’s emotional stability. Those who score high on the neurotic scale tend to be anxious and spend a lot of time worrying about things unnecessarily. People who are calm, self-assured and contented score low on the neuroticism scale.
Be mindful of the extremes
So, what does all this psychology stuff mean when it comes to choosing a gift for someone?
The main take-away from this is to be mindful of those people who trend towards the extremes in any of these personality traits. The more a person is an outlier in the expression of a Big Five trait, the more careful you will need to be (or not) in your selection of an appropriate gift.
To give you an idea of what I mean, let’s take a look at each trait and the implications of scoring high or low in any of them.
Openness (to new things)
People who score low in terms of openness are more likely to enjoy material gifts and experiences that are already familiar to them — things they are already comfortable with. In other words, don’t try and ‘shake up’ their world. It’ll probably go over like a lead balloon.
High-scoring open people enjoy the opportunity to try new things. That means you can be more experimental with the gifts you give them. Open people also tend to be creative and often appreciate art.
Conscientiousness
If you know someone who scores low in terms of conscientiousness, it’s probably best to avoid gifts that are time sensitive (like concert tickets) or things that require a lot of focus to enjoy. For instance, a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle probably isn’t a good present for someone who scores low on conscientiousness because they’re easily distracted and can have difficulty completing tasks.
Conscientious people, on the other hand, like to achieve things and are typically very organized. Gifts that help them achieve and be more organized — or challenge them in some way — are likely to be well received.
Extraversion
When people score low on this trait, we refer to them as introverts. Strong introverts probably won’t enjoy a gift that will draw attention to them. Nor are they likely to enjoy an experience that requires them to interact with strangers or otherwise takes them out of their ‘comfort zone’. (For example, a karaoke experience would be a very poor gift choice for an introvert.)
People who are very extraverted thrive on lots of interaction with other people. If a gift grabs attention and is a positive conversation-starter, it will be well received. Avoid gifts and experiences that require relative isolation to be properly enjoyed.
Agreeableness
People who score low when it comes to agreeableness are likely to be very picky. If you’re unsure about what to get them, either get a gift that is very versatile (like a cash-equivalent gift card) or ask them what they want — and don’t deviate from their request.
Very agreeable people are easy to buy for as they’re likely to enjoy almost anything you get them.
That said, I’d suggest going the extra mile and try to choose the ‘perfect’ gift for this kind of person. They will appreciate it more than you can imagine.
Neuroticism
Calm, self-confident people score low on the neuroticism scale, so they’re unlikely to read much into the gift you get for them. They’ll most likely enjoy it for what it is.
Very neurotic people, however, worry about way too many things, so you need to mindful about what a neurotic person might ‘read into’ a gift you give them. What you see as a practical gift might be perceived as some kind of judgement.
Keep unintended consequences in mind and consider asking what a person you know to neurotic might want as a gift if you want to reduce their anxiety.
Don’t confuse ‘interests’ with ‘personality’
When researching how personality type can influence gift selection, I took time to check out several gift-oriented, on-line stores.
What quickly became apparent was that when those sites referred to personality, what they really meant was ‘interests’ — at least most of the time.
I found categories like ‘traveler’ and ‘fitness freak’ right alongside ‘romantic’ and ‘creative’ — all under the heading Personality.
Though these terms are familiar and make categorising gifts on a website relatively easy, few of them actually relate directly to personality traits in anyway at all.
Personality adds another dimension to interests, or hobbies, occupation, gender, age, relationship status or any number of other aspects of an individual’s life. An interest or occupation does not make someone who they are. Their personality does.
Knowing someone’s interests will help with suitable categories for gift buying, but appreciating the nuances of their personality will help you be a more thoughtful gift-giver.
A parting thought …
Before you get too carried away with your new-found appreciation of personality traits, when it comes to gift choices, do not underestimate the importance of needs and wants.
Personality considerations should not override what someone expressly wants or needs. Rather, when you don’t have a specific gift request to guide you, an understanding of personality can be a useful tool in helping you work out how best to satisfy that want or need.
After all, thoughtful gift-giving isn’t about how clever you are. Indeed, it isn’t about you at all. What it is about is bringing happiness to the people you’re close to, and often that means letting go of what we think they’d like and actually getting them something they want or need.
[1] The Big Five were developed in the 1970s by two psychology research teams. These teams were led by Paul Costa and Robert R. McCrae of the National Institutes of Health and Warren Norman and Lewis Goldberg of the University of Michigan and the University of Oregon respectively. Source: Scientific American.
