Social Engineering Blogs

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Santa Claus and Deception

santa-claus-christmasHow merry is it to lie to your kids about Santa Claus?

While some parents worry about the impact of lying to their children about this popular Christmas legend, it’s possible that it may be better for them in the long run. This is what Dr. Kristen Dunfield, a professor of developmental psychology, argued in a recent blog. Certainly, concerns have their role, but she contends that the process of figuring out the truth can be good for their development.

In fact, fantastical beliefs, like that in Santa Claus, can lead to certain positive developments in a child’s psyche. This can include what are known as counterfactual reasoning skills, which basically involve a child’s ability to think creatively and outside the box.

There is not even much a parent has to do to foster this belief. As Dr. Dunfield discusses, belief in Santa is overwhelmingly popular amongst children, but they tend to figure out the truth by the age of eight or so. This means that not only does the burden of promoting the myth not fall on the parent, but neither does the duty of dispelling it.

This very process of coming to understand that Santa is not real can also be helpful from a developmental perspective. By figuring out that magical actions are not really possible, children come to develop and apply critical thinking to the world around them.

That very method of critical thinking is often on display when older children begin testing the mythos, asking difficult questions about how Santa can manage to circumnavigate the globe, for instance.

The goal of a parent, for Dr. Dunfield, does not have to be about propping up the story or about being the Grinch who dispels the happy story. Instead, parents can encourage their children’s creative impulses, asking them to think through their questions for themselves.

For instance, she recommends “simply direct[ing] the question back to them, allowing your child to come up with explanations for themselves.” Rather than just answering, a parent can respond “I don’t know, how do you think the sleigh flies?”

This may help many of us with the dilemma of whether to lie to our children. While deception in the household is common, that does not mean it is particularly desirable. However, by simply allowing children to come to understand the world for themselves, the problem can really be turned to their cognitive advantage.

One could even make the argument that this sort of process can help bond a family together, discussing the question of Santa and using the mythos as a sort of family-based holiday tradition. Not only could this be a fun way to spend time with a child, but it can also help forge family cohesion over the season.

This may be especially important, given that the ways in which we spend the holidays can have a significant impact on how pleasant the time is. For instance, we discussed in a past blog how family rituals significantly increased feelings of life satisfaction and reduce social loneliness. Another blog focused on how social interaction, and not overreliance on gift consumption, can significantly predict happier holidays.

However, if you are concerned that you are being lied to about Santa Claus, maybe this would be a good time to check out our deception training program.

Emotions in Gift Giving

What do you say when you receive a gift you are not too fond of?

In light of this holiday season, the University of Hertfordshire has conducted a study on gift giving. The focus of this study was determining whether or not gift givers could tell whether or not a recipient liked a present just by looking at their facial expressions and nonverbal behavior.

Dr. Karen Pine, a Professor of Developmental Psychology, led the study of 680 men and women in the process of giving and receiving gifts.

Three quarters of the participants were able to correctly identify whether or not a recipient of one of their gifts truly liked it. According to Dr. Pine, “People always try and say the right things, there’s a lot of social pressure to say the right things and to give the impression that we do like a present and our words tend to be quite positive, but the real feelings tend to leak out in our non-verbal behaviour.”

Eye contact, or lack thereof, is one easily spotted sign that the recipient did not like their present. They try to avoid eye contact with the giver in case the expression on their face gives away their true feelings. The expression on a displeased recipient’s face is often a ‘social smile,’ which involves only the mouth muscles. When someone is truly happy about something, they smile with both their eyes and their mouth; what is often called a Duchenne smile.

In terms of the gift itself, the recipient tends to rewrap it and put it out of sight fairly quickly if they do not like it. Contrastingly, if someone really likes a gift, they hold it up like a trophy, passing it around and showing it off. They also tend to hold on to the present for a little longer. If it’s a scarf that they really like, for example, the recipient may stroke it for awhile, or even put it on.

However, a negative nonverbal response is not necessarily indicative of someone being unappreciative of a gift. Perhaps what they have received isn’t quite what they were hoping for, but they could still be appreciative of the gesture. Isn’t that what is important?

Dr. Pine told BBC News that she believes we need “to go back to the old values about what a gift is really for; it is a token of appreciation or affection for a person.” However, by conducting this study, she is putting emphasis on reactions towards the gifted items themselves, rather than the meaning behind them.

Still, our reactions to gifted items can make a huge difference for our stress levels and enjoyment of the holiday season.

As we have reported on in past blogs, gift consumption is not necessarily the path to a happy holiday season. Instead, people tend to report greater satisfaction by engaging in family-based or spiritual traditions.

That is not to say that gifts have no role in these celebrations. In fact, many families bond over genuine and heartfelt gift giving, while many religious traditions see the exchange of gifts as integral to the celebration.

Instead, it has more to do with the thought we put into the gift. What do you think? Are you able to tell when a gift you have given is not well received?

If you are still struggling at really understanding people’s reaction, that might be a good reason to learn more about reading people. The good news is that reading people you are close to tends to be the easiest!

Christmas Rituals and Emotions

Is the holiday complete without traditional family celebrations and holiday rituals?

This is exactly what a team of Spanish and Chilean researchers attempted to evaluate in a 2011 study. Situating their research into an extensive tradition finding that ritual practices are important for personal happiness and family cohesion, Dr. Paez and his team examined what role holiday-specific traditions had on emotional well-being.

Importantly, past research found mixed results in the role of rituals and positive emotions, but there is a rich theoretical traditional that seeks to explain how rituals cultivate empathy and social cooperation. Anthropologists have seen them as critical in developing group bonds, for instance.

In studying Spanish students during the Christmas season, Dr. Paez and his team sought to test this theory. Not only does Christmas tend to consist of a relatively static set of universally practiced rituals, at least within a given culture, but many of these rituals are also particularly family-centric. This provides an effective case study for the role of ritual on emotions.

Overall, they hypothesized that the participation in family meals and holiday celebrations would generally boost positive affect and reports of life satisfaction. There should also be interpersonal benefits, they reasoned, in increasing attitudes of social support and what they call “collective emotions” or perceived family climate.

The study was primarily conducted by recruiting participants and asking them a series of Likert scale-style questions about positive/negative affect, life satisfaction, perceived social support, and social loneliness. These were applied shortly before Christmas, and then another series that specifically asked about these same measures was fielded post-holidays.

The vast majority of participants took place in ritual meals for Christmas, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve/Day. They found largely significant results, with negative affect and social loneliness both dropping, while life satisfaction and perceived social support both increased.

They managed to conclude both that participation in holiday rituals tended to lead to greater well-being, and that most people studied did in fact participate in family rituals.

This generally supported theoretical expectations that rituals would result in such a boost in positive mental attitudes, but it may be important to consider exactly what these rituals consist of. As we wrote last week, people tend to celebrate Christmas with a variety of different levels of consumption or spiritual activity.

In that blog, we discussed how holiday traditions that focus on family or religious rituals tend to result in a much happier and low-stress period, while those based in consumption and financial exchange tended to be stressful and anxiety-provoking. Hopefully future research replicates Dr. Paez’s findings in that way!