Positive Feeling
A first and most common category of motives expresses friendship, love,
gratitude, respect, loyalty, or solidarity. These gifts have as their main
purpose to communicate our positive feelings to the recipient. Some of
the motives reported by our respondents are strongly other-directed and
altruistic: one wants to contribute to another person’swell-beingwithout
thinking about a return service; one helps or cares because one feels a
general moral obligation to do so. The most important moral criterion
in people’s considerations concerning their gift giving is related to need:
one gives because the other needs it, without expecting any return in
the first place. One example involves a female respondent who helps
her demented mother with her finances: “Yes, you should do that as a
daughter, I think. You don’t receive in return somuch anymore, but that
is not important.” And: “I am a human being, so I have to help a fellow
human. That’s how it is.”
However, even such gifts may (consciously or unconsciously) have
a strategic aim. For instance, gifts may express our desire to forgive,
to repair some wrong in the past, to ease our conscience, to flatter, to
attract attention, or to maintain our presence in someone’s life. Giving to
charity is another example of benefiting another personwhile at the same
time relieving our own conscience. The latter example clearly shows that
contributing to another person’swelfaremay serve one’s own self-interest
at the same time.