Saturday, December 26, 2009

Xmas Psych 101

Via Ryan Sanger at True/Slant comes this whimsical collection, The 12 Psychology Studies of Christmas. The collection encompasses:
1. How to have a happy Christmas

2. What's the best type of chocolate?

3. When gifts go wrong

4. Don't give money!

5. It's all about the giving

6. What do your decorations say about you?

7. The smell of Christmas

8. Good food is mostly in the mind

9. Hallucinating

10. Searching for the Christmas spirit

11. Bad jokes

12. Santa Claus
Mr. Nearing and I had a really bad case of No. 3: When Gifts Go Wrong during our second Christmas together.
Giving and receiving gifts can be a no-win situation. We assume people close to us know us well enough to get us good gifts. So when a bad gift comes it tends to reflect poorly on the relationship. However men and women seem to have different psychological defence mechanisms for dealing with poor gifts: women pretend the gift is just what they've always wanted whereas men are more likely to say what they think. And then the arguments start.
Ah, the silliness of youth.

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