Giving gifts can make you happier

In a study from Harvard University, researchers randomly assigned around 700 participants to either buy something for themselves or for a stranger. After making the purchase, the participants reported how happy they felt.

Overall, the researchers found that participants who had bought something for a stranger felt happier than those who had bought something for themselves.

"The act of giving actually does improve your happiness," said Michael Norton, a psychologist who teaches at Harvard Business School. "If you take $5 out of your pocket today, the science really does show that spending $5 on yourself doesn't do much for you. But spending that $5 on somebody else is more likely to increase your happiness."

Gift giving can also be contagious, with studies showing that people are more likely to give something back when they are given something. "We tend to unconsciously imitate other people's acts of giving," said Dacher Keltner, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-director of the Greater Good Science Center.

According to Aubrey, "[r]eciprocity is a foundation of good relationships and when we surround ourselves with generous people, we tend to feel the same."

6 tips to make your holiday shopping less stressful

Although research shows that giving gifts can improve your happiness, the "process of shopping, wrapping and schlepping gifts can be tiresome – or even exasperating given all of our day-to-day demands and other holiday stressors," Aubrey writes.

To "feel the warm glow of gift giving, and avoid the angst," Aubrey offers six tips on how to make your holiday shopping less stressful.

1. Be intentional about the gifts you give

Rather than only buying gifts during the holiday, you can start earlier in the year. If you find something that reminds you of a person, buy it for them then. By doing this, you make gift giving a habit and can improve upon it over time.

"Giving does require us to say, hold on, I should stop focusing on myself," Norton said. "The more habitually we can do that, the less likely it is that, come the holiday, we're scrambling at the last minute."

2. Make a ritual out of your shopping and wrapping

A "group of my friends has gathered for the past 20 years for our That's A Wrap party the week before Christmas," Aubrey writes. "I look forward to this tradition. It's a way to catch up, and I love the camaraderie and not wrapping alone."

3. Consider gifting an experience

If you're worried about giving someone the perfect present, it's important to remember that "it's the gesture that counts more than the thing itself," Aubrey writes.

Instead of a material gift, you can give someone a night out, tickets to a show, a pass to a park, or a museum membership. You can also donate to a charity in someone else's name.

"When we give experiences to people, they're almost by definition more personalized. They're reflective of our relationship to them," Keltner said.

4. Share the opening experience with the receiver

"What we see in our research is actually that we do prefer that we see the other person get it," Norton said. "We do like this little bit of kind of clapping at the end of the giving that makes us feel a little bit happier about the giving."

If you're not in the same place with the receiver, you can do a video call during the unwrapping process.

5. Remember your reasons for giving someone a gift

If the holiday hustle starts to feel annoying, remind yourself that giving gifts is a way to show love, gratitude, and generosity to the people who are most important to you.

"Tapping into our values can be stress reducing and prosocial acts are actually good for our health," said Elissa Epel, a stress researcher at University of California, San Francisco.

6. Take a moment for yourself

Because it's easy to get caught up in materialism and costs when you're shopping for gifts, Epel recommends taking a short break and grounding yourself in nature as a way to reduce your holiday stress.

"Immerse your senses in the sights and sounds of nature or the sky, and slow your breathing," Epel said. You can also breathe in for four and out for six for a quick stress reliever.

Overall, Aubrey writes that "[f]eeling that spirit of giving and the connectedness it can bring … [is] what the holidays are all about." (Aubrey, "Shots," NPR, 12/18)

Research suggests that even the smallest expressions of gratitude can have a powerful impact on collaboration. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Sara Algoe, a professor at the  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and founder and director of the  Love Consortium, offers four tips to help workers show appreciation in the workplace.