Experts work overtime to take the fun out of Christmas

Feeling bad about the way the pandemic is disrupting your Christmas arrangements? Cheer up, I have good news – of a sort. Keep reading and I’ll convince you Christmas has become so “problematic” you’re probably better off not bothering this year.

A bad-to-non-existent festive season is the perfect way to top off this horrible year, leaving us confident 2021 couldn’t possibly be worse. After this, it’s all upside.

With nowhere to go and nothing better to do, I’ve been searching the internet for ways of improving on the Joy of Christmas. Having consulted the earnest academic experts, I’ve realised Christmas is a minefield of impossible dreams, dashed expectations, overspending, overindulgence and waste, all of it threatened by the risk of a family fight.

And that’s before you remember the damage to the planet – the minimisation of which so many academics seem to see as the whole point of Christmas. (I warned you they were earnest.)

But first, a consumer warning: none of the facts and figures the academics toss around so confidently comes with a money-back guarantee. Read them, be impressed, do not commit to memory.

I must start by acknowledging the seminal contribution of economists to the Yuletide Killjoy movement. One economist who shall remain nameless made his name with a journal article and then book titled The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.

His point was that, in the frequent cases where the gifter of a gift paid more for it than the giftee valued it, the difference was a “deadweight loss” – money spent that yielded no benefit to either party.

His solution was that if you must keep giving presents, stick to cash. Great. Remember, the goal of all Christmas advice is to be admonitory rather than helpful. I’m smart; you're not so.

But the purveyors of the dismal science have no monopoly over the academy’s efforts to increase the dismality of Christmas. The charge is now being led by, of all people, the marketing experts, themselves led by Dr Adrian Camilleri of the University of Technology Sydney, and Professor Gary Mortimer of the Queensland University of Technology.

Camilleri’s research into the psychology of gift-giving finds there are two potentially conflicting goals. First is to make the recipient happy, which mostly depends on whether the gift is something they want.

Second is to strengthen the relationship between giver and recipient. This is achieved by giving a thoughtful and memorable gift – one that shows the giver really knows the recipient. “Usually this means figuring out what someone wants without directly asking,” Camilleri says.

See the problem? Asking them what they want is the way to achieve high marks on desirability, but yields a fail on communicating thoughtfulness.

But now we step up the analysis (stop me if I’m going too fast). Camilleri sets up a matrix, showing the four quadrants made when you account for degrees of thoughtfulness and then degrees of desirability.

In the top left-hand quadrant – unthoughtful and undesired – would be a gift of, say, a pair of socks. The top right-hand quadrant – unthoughtful and desired – would be, say, a gift of money. In the bottom left-hand quadrant – undesired but thoughtful – would be a present you’d never imagined getting, but quite liked. In the bottom right-hand box is a gift that’s both desired and thoughtful.

See how high are the chances of giving a present that misses the mark? “This is why buying a gift can be so anxiety-inducing,” he says. “There is a ‘social risk’ involved.”

But isn’t it the thought that counts? Not as much as you think. Research shows gift-givers tend to overestimate how well unsolicited gifts will be received. Research also shows people tend to overestimate their ability to discern what a recipient will like.

As well, gift-givers tend to overestimate the extent to which more expensive gifts will be received as being more thoughtful. Turns out recipients appreciate expensive and inexpensive gifts similarly.

And they actually feel closer to those who give convenient gifts such as a gift certificate for a nearby, ordinary restaurant, rather than a distant, flash restaurant.

Mortimer and colleagues warn against the evil of giving for giving’s sake. They report that $400 million unwanted presents were given in Christmas 2018, comprising about 10 million items, many of which probably went to landfill. Topping the unwanted list were (in order) novelty items, candles, pamper products, pyjamas or slippers and underwear or socks.

“The shopping frenzy is not good for the planet. It generates a mountain of waste, including plastics, decorations, wrapping paper and party paraphernalia only used once. It also involves thousands of air and road miles to transport goods, which creates up to 650kg of carbon dioxide per person," we're told.

Which brings us to overeating. Under the heading of “How not to give the gift of food guilt this holiday season”, Dr Kelly McGonigal, a psychologist at California’s Stanford University, asks: “Are you overloading your loved ones with indulgent treats they’ll regret?”

I tell you, we’re much better out of the whole thing.

Read more >>

Orana to Christmas, summer and the chance to go bush

Out on the plains the brolgas are dancing
Lifting their feet like war horses prancing
Up to the sun the woodlarks go winging
Faint in the dawn light echoes their singing
Orana! Orana! Orana to Christmas Day

To me one of the nicest bits of Christmas is a chance to sing the Australian carols of the old ABC’s William G. James, including Carol of the Birds. Orana, by the way, means welcome.

I don’t like to boast, but one of my achievements this year was to see a brolga. Several, in fact. Flying rather than dancing but, even so, one to cross off my bucket list. I’ve also seen jabirus, magpie geese, comb-crested jacana, osprey, white-bellied sea eagles, red-tailed black cockatoos and crocodiles, fresh and salty.

I’ve also seen Timorese ponies, Asian buffalo and – more surprising – Indonesian banteng cattle. By now the banteng are endangered in Indonesia, but going strong in northern Australia.

All during a 12-day tour of Arnhem Land, bouncing along unsealed roads in a truck converted to a bus, to visit remote Aboriginal communities (complete with permits) and cave paintings. An unforgettable experience, one moneyed Baby Boomers should consider before they jet off on yet another exploration of other people’s homelands.

Actually, I sometimes wonder whether the day is coming when – because of the damage it does to the atmosphere – we will look back with amazement and envy on the relatively brief golden age when flying for tourism was not only permitted but dirt cheap, so we roamed the globe whenever we could get away.

It’s a terrible thought. Let’s hope it never happens, thanks to some technological advance in aircraft fuel. But while it lasts, let’s not forget what a privileged generation we are.

But what of ecotourism? Is it as virtuous as we wilderness wanderers like to imagine, or will the new age puritans put the kybosh on that, too?

Well, I’ve been checking what the academic experts are saying – courtesy of my second-favourite website, The Conversation – and, though you can find the killjoys if you look, I think ecotourism gets a qualified tick.

It’s true that, in an ideal world, we’d all stay at home admiring nature from afar and insisting the politicians keep the outback – and other continents’ backblocks – locked up and in pristine condition. Where damage had already been done, we’d happily pay high taxes to compensate farmers, miners and tour operators for closing their businesses, and to restore the land to its former state.

No, not going to happen. Those who live in far-flung parts aren’t going to renounce the material ambitions that drive the rest of us. They’ll continue finding ways to make a buck. If so, ecotourism – whatever its downsides – will do a lot less harm than many other ways for bushies to earn a living.

Dr Guy Castley and two other researchers at Griffith University find ecotourism can contribute to conservation or adversely affect wildlife, or both. Attitudes of local communities towards wildlife influence whether they support or oppose poaching. Income from ecotourism may be used for conservation and local community development, but not always.

But for seven of the nine threatened species they studied – the great green macaw in Costa Rica, Egyptian vultures in Spain, hoolock gibbons in India, penguins, wild dogs and cheetahs in Africa, and golden lion tamarins in Brazil – ecotourism provided net conservation gains.

This was achieved through establishing private conservation reserves, restoring habitat or by reducing habitat damage. Removing feral predators, increasing anti-poaching patrols, captive breeding and supplementary feeding also helped.

For orang-utans in Sumatra, however, small-scale ecotourism couldn’t overcome the negative effects of logging. And for New Zealand’s sea lions, ecotourism only compounded the effects of intensive fishing because it increased the number of pups dying as a result of direct disturbance at sites where the sea lions came ashore.

Michele Barnes and Sarah Sutcliffe, of James Cook University, studied the effect of a shark education and conservation tour off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Sharks are crucial to our marine ecosystems, yet many shark populations are in decline because of fishing (particularly for shark-fin soup), fisheries bycatch, habitat destruction, and climate change.

Sharks have a PR problem. They are feared by many, demonised by the evil media, treated as human-hunting monsters, and cast as the villains in blockbuster movies. In many places, governments cull sharks in the name of beachgoers’ safety.

The researchers found that the program gave participants significantly more knowledge of the ecological role of sharks and a more favourable attitude towards them. It also had a significantly positive effect on people’s intentions to engage in shark conservation behaviour. This remained true even after allowing for the participants’ greater initial positive attitudes towards sharks than the public generally.

Even when not off somewhere exotic, my family almost always ends up holidaying in or near some national park. But what about all the damage done to parks to accommodate the needs of tourists?

Dr Susan Moore, of Murdoch University, and others from Southern Cross University, argue sensibly that parks need visitors to get vital community and political support.

“We need people in parks because people vote and parks don’t,” they say. “Strong advocacy from park visitors for environmentally friendly experiences, like wildlife viewing, photography, hiking, swimming, canoeing and camping, can counterbalance pressures for environmentally destructive activities such as hunting and grazing.” Amen to that.

Read more >>

Does gift-giving make sense? Silly question

It’s the season of the year when the bylaws of the economists’ union require me to issue the stern admonition that the medieval practice of gift-giving should cease and desist forthwith. And the fact that I’m a bit late won’t stop me.

Perhaps more people - recipients of socks and handkerchiefs and other wondrous surprises - will be receptive to the profession’s utterly disinterested (look it up) advice and see the wisdom of my words.

Gift-giving is an irrational act, one where sentiment and emotion triumph over good sense. Since it’s hardly possible for the giftor better to know what the giftee would like to be given than the giftee themself, the success rate of the practice is abysmally low.

So low, in fact, as to justify economists using one of their worst pejoratives to brand the practice as involving a “deadweight loss” – one where the benefit to the giver and the benefit to the receiver are insufficient to justify the cost of the transaction, thereby creating a loss to the community.

(And please, please don’t ruin my Boxing Day by arguing that the commercialisation of Christmas at least creates jobs. The economists’ union’s Christmastide message is that any mug can create jobs, all you have to do is spend money – your own or someone else’s. The whole point of economics is to help the community spend money in ways that yield it greater benefit than other ways.)

But fear not. Go back to eating your leftovers in peace (and goodwill). I’m not actually a member of the economists’ union, but an adherent to a dissident sect known as behavioural economists (people who, too late in life, realised psychology made more sense than economics).

This bunch of heretics delights in pointing to the glaring weaknesses in the oversimplified model conventional economists carry in their heads.

But you need only to have gone to Sunday school to see the weakness in all the nonsense about the deadweight loss of Christmas. I think it was the little chap himself who said it was more blessed to give than receive.

And there is, in fact, plenty of what a deranged economist would call “giver’s surplus”. How do I know? Because psychological experiments have demonstrated it – many of them conducted by Professor Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia.

But just last week came new research by Ed O’Brien, of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Samantha Kassirer, of Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, showing that “the joy of giving lasts longer than the joy of getting”.

One of the great limitations of human nature is “hedonic adaptation”. The happiness we feel after a particular activity or event diminishes each time it’s repeated. It’s likely this phenomenon is “adaptive” – we’ve evolved to react that way because it increases our ability to survive and reproduce; it keeps us striving.

But the researchers find that giving to others may be an exception to the rule. In two studies they found that participants’ happiness did not decline, or declined more slowly, if they repeatedly bestowed gifts on others versus repeatedly receiving those same gifts themselves.

Separate research by Dr Vera te Velde, a lecturer in economics at the University of Queensland, has found evidence for the existence of “beliefs-based altruism” – concern about other people’s emotions and other psychological experiences, beyond any material measure of their wellbeing.

This means “we don’t give gifts only because we want people to have something that they want; we also give gifts because we want them to feel cared about, experience joy or a pleasant surprise when receiving it. Or to prevent them from feeling disappointed if we fail to give anything,” she says.

This kind of altruism can apply in many other situations. “When girl guides come to our doors to sell cookies, we buy them not only to support the group and because we like cookies, but also because we want the girls to feel successful and valued,” she says.

But how can we be sure that a pure concern for others’ feelings is the motivation for these behaviours, instead of – or maybe, as well as – concern about our own reputations? After all, I may not only want girl guides to feel good, I may also want to be known as someone who supports them.

To help answer this question Velde experimented with a sharing game. One person is asked to share $10 with another person. But the bank handling the transfer occasionally makes a mistake and transfers exactly $1 to the other person. So if that person receives $1, they don’t know if it’s a bank mistake or the first person’s selfishness.

Asked whether they thought the recipients would prefer to know about giver’s true intentions, many participants thought they would. Even so, when they played the game themselves, the participants were more likely to give either exactly $1 (thereby hiding their selfishness) or exactly $5 (thereby revealing themselves to be perfectly fair).

But get this: even the people who tried to hide their selfishness were demonstrating their concern about the emotions of the other person. Economics makes a lot more sense with a bit of psychology thrown in.

Read more >>

We should change the culture of Christmas

Christmas, we're assured, brings out our best selves. We're full of goodwill to all men (and women). We get together with family and friends – even those we don't get on with – eat and drink and give each other presents.

We make an effort for the kiddies. Some of us even get a good feeling out of helping ensure the homeless get a decent feed on the day.

And this magnanimous spirit is owed to The Man Who Invented Christmas, Charles Dickens. (You weren't thinking of someone else, surely?)

According to a new survey of 1421 people, conducted by the Australia Institute, three-quarters of respondents like buying Christmas gifts.

Almost half – 47 per cent – like having people buy them gifts. And 41 per cent don't expect to get presents they'll never use.

Well, isn't that lovely. Merry Christmas, one and all!

Of course, there's a darker, less charitable, more Scrooge-like interpretation of what Christmas has become since A Christmas Carol.

Under the influence of more than a century of relentless advertising and commercialisation – including the soft-drink-company-created Santa – its original significance as a religious holy-day has been submerged beneath an orgy of consumerism, materialism and over-indulgence.

We rush from shop to shop, silently cursing those of our rellos who are hard to buy for. We attend party after party, stuffing ourselves with food and drinking more than we should.

All those children who can't wait to get up early on Christmas morning and tear open their small mountain of presents are being groomed as the next generation of consumerists. Next, try the joys of retail therapy, sonny.

But the survey also reveals a (growing?) minority of respondents who don't enjoy the indulgence and wastefulness of Christmas.

A fifth of respondents – more males than females – don't like buying gifts for people at Christmas. Almost a third expect to get gifts they won't use and 42 per cent – far more males and females – would prefer others not to buy them gifts.

The plain fact is that a hugely disproportionate share of economic activity – particularly consumer spending – occurs in one month of the year, December.

And just think of all the waste – not just the over-catering, but all the clothes and gadgets that sit around in cupboards until they're thrown out. All the stuff that could be returned to the store, but isn't.

At least the new practice of regifting helps. Unwanted gifts are passed from hand to hand, rather like an adult game of pass-the-parcel, until someone summons the moral courage to throw them out.

Still, buying things that don't get used is a good way to create jobs and improve the lives of Australians, no?

Not really. The survey finds only 23 per cent of respondents agree with this sentiment, while 62 per cent disagree.

One change since Scrooge's day is that those who worry most about waste – at Christmas or any other time – do so not for reasons of miserliness, but because of the avoidable cost to the natural environment.

Rich people like us need to reduce our demands on the environment to make room for the poorer people of the world to lift their material standard of living without our joint efforts wrecking the planet.

This doesn't require us to accept a significantly lower standard of living, just move to an economy where our energy comes from renewable sources and our use of natural resources – renewable and non-renewable – is much less profligate.

This is the thinking behind the book Curing Affluenza, by the Australia Institute's chief economist – and instigator of the survey – Dr Richard Denniss.

He says we can stay as materialists (lovers of things) so long as we give up being consumerists (lovers of buying new things). We can love our homes and cars and clothes and household equipment – so long as that love means we look after them, maintain and repair them, and delay replacing them for as long as we reasonably can.

The survey shows we're most likely to repair cars, bikes and tools and gardening equipment, but least likely to repair clothing, shoes and kitchen appliances, such as blenders, toasters and microwaves.

What would encourage us to get more things repaired? Almost two-thirds of respondents would do more if repairs were covered by a warranty. More than 60 per cent would do more if repairs were cheaper. And 46 per cent if repairs were more convenient – which I take to mean if it was easier to find a repairer.

How about making repair work cheaper by removing the 10 per cent goods and services tax on it? Two-thirds support the idea; only 19 per cent oppose.

Point is, there are straight-forward things the government could do to encourage us to repair more and waste less. Were it to do so, this would help restore older attitudes in favour of repairing rather than replacing.

Trouble is, politicians tend to be followers rather than leaders on such matters. So the first thing we need is a shift in the culture that makes more of us more conscious of the damage our everyday consumption is doing to the environment. That putting out the recycling once a week ain't enough.

We could start by changing the culture of Christmas.

Read more >>

How to find happiness at Christmas

The beauty of Christmas is that it's a time when everyone's happy. Well, not quite. Better to say, it's a time when everyone tries to be happy, but we succeed in varying degrees.

When Dr Peter Clarke, of Griffith Business School in Brisbane, surveyed 450 people to ascertain the nature of "Christmas spirit", he found it had five components: bonhomie, gay abandon, ritual, shopping and a little bit of dejection.

Yes. We all have periods of less-than-perfect bliss and perhaps we don't have any more of them at Christmas than at other times; it just feels that way because we expect to be happy at Christmas and are surrounded by people trying so hard to be.

Perhaps. But my guess is more of us do experience periods of unhappiness at Christmas. There are those who, for various reasons, have no family or friends with whom to celebrate, or those who miss those now missing.

Then there's all the distress arising from overadministration of that substance supposed to magically generate good moods. Too many hangovers after too many Christmas parties, regretted behaviour at the office party (this year, Fairfax Media employees received a stern warning that no tolerance would be shown), things said around the dinner table that would have been better left unsaid. Old wounds opened.

Yes, Christmas has its share of unhappiness, even if just the wish we hadn't eaten (or spent) so much. There are, of course, a few traps that can be avoided.

If, as some clerics allege, materialism has become our dominant religion, Christmas must surely be our most sacred economic festival. But the evidence suggests that's not the way to wellbeing.

I've said it before, but it's one of my strongest conclusions after decades of economy-watching, so I'll say it again: the trick to succeeding in the capitalist system is to say no to most of the blandishments of the capitalists.

Professor Tim Kasser​, a psychologist at Knox College, Illinois, and Kennon Sheldon, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, wanted to determine what makes for a merry Christmas.

They asked 117 people of varying ages questions about their satisfaction, stress and emotional state during the Christmas season, as well as questions about their experiences, use of money and consumption behaviour.

They found that those who most remembered family and religious experiences were happier than those for whom spending money and receiving gifts were the main things they remained conscious of.

Of course, for many of us, religious experiences are no longer part of Christmas. Don't take this the wrong way – I'm not on a recruiting drive – but I suspect those who retain a religious commitment already have "man's search for meaning" sorted, while the rest of us can spend a lot of time looking for substitutes.

All those claims that the environment or economics or libertarianism or a dozen other things have become "the new religion" are unconsciously affirming that humans function better when they have something to believe in, something outside and above their own self-centred concerns.

There's psychological evidence to support that. It doesn't have to be the Christian religion, however. And other research has shown that a big part of the benefit people get from church-going, or its equivalent, is social contact and membership of a group.

One advantage of a religious upbringing that's of particular relevance at Christmas is an instinctive understanding that, to quote some chap supposed to have been born at this time, "it is more blessed to give than to receive".

Think of Christmas as about giving rather than receiving and you're well advanced towards a happier time. And, naturally, there's empirical support for the notion.

A study by Elizabeth Dunn and Lara Aknin​, of the University of British Columbia, and Michael Norton, of Harvard Business School, first asked a sample of 632 Americans to rate their general happiness, report their annual income and estimate how much they spent on bills and expenses, gifts for themselves, gifts for others and donations to charity.

They found that personal spending was uncorrelated with happiness, whereas higher "pro-social spending" correlated with significantly greater happiness.

Next, 16 employees were tested for their happiness well before and well after they received a profit-sharing bonus. They found that those who devoted more of their bonus to spending on other people or a charity experienced greater happiness after receiving the bonus. And how they spent their bonus was a better predictor of happiness than the size of the bonus itself.

This, of course, is just a narrower application of the much-noted principle that happiness can only be achieved indirectly. If you want to end up realising you're happy, focus on increasing the happiness of others, not your own.

In discovering all these studies, I must acknowledge the assistance of the British psychologist, Dr Jeremy Dean, author of the blogsite PsyBlog.

I'm indebted to him for drawing to my attention a study by Vohs, Wang, Gino and Norton, which finds that engaging in ritualised behaviour enhances the enjoyment of food, particularly if it makes you wait a little longer.

So, Christmas rituals are important. In my family, we repeat a short but almost incomprehensible Scottish grace by Rabbie Burns that our mother taught us, to the bemusement of in-laws.

Have a happy one.

Read more >>