What’s the point of it all? Shouldn’t the holiday season simply be about family, friends and food? And wouldn’t everyone just be better off spending their own money on things they know they want? Gift exchanges may seem wasteful and impractical. But as social scientific research reveals, the costs and benefits of gift-giving aren’t what they seem.
Dimitris Xygalatas
Dimitris Xygalatas is an anthropologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Connecticut. He studies some of the things that unite and divide us, focusing on religion and ritual, sports, cooperation, and the interaction between cognition and culture. He has held positions at the universities of Princeton, Aarhus, and Masaryk, where he served as Director of the Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion. At UConn, he directs the Experimental Anthropology Lab, which develops methods and technologies for studying human interaction scientifically in real-life settings.