The holiday season centers on a tradition full of emotions, often contradictory: the giving of gifts.

How we decide what to spend on our loved ones involves a multitude of factors. How much money do they have or don’t they have? What will our gift say about our own situation? How does this gift make us feel? And does this gift break traditional norms?

This whirlwind of emotions can often lead us to spend more than we set in our budget, as many surveys conducted around this time of year typically show. So, understanding what comes into play when we buy for others and putting ourselves in the recipient’s shoes could help curb that urge to overspend.

Wealth as a driving force

Our loved one’s wealth can affect our gift choices in a variety of ways. Two studies show the different answers we have.

In the first study conducted by Farnoush Reshadi and Julian Givi, it seems that we are more likely to give our friends who earn more than us more expensive gifts than those who earn less. The researchers explained this by asking a group of study participants to choose an amount of Amazon gift cards for a real friend who makes more money or for a friend who makes less.

On average, people chose to spend $59 on their rich friend, about 30% more than the $46 they had planned for their more disadvantaged friend.

In the second part of the study, where participants could choose only between three gift card amounts: $20, $40, and $60, the results were similar. Half chose the $60 gift card for their wealthier friends, compared to a third who chose that amount for their poorer friends.

“Regardless of the wealth of the donor, we still saw the same effect,” said Reshadi, an assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s business school.

When they looked at why participants were more likely to give the higher dollar gift card to wealthier friends, they discovered two underlying factors.

“At least in part, people behave this way because they want to impress their rich friend,” Reshadi said. “At the same time, this effect was partly because they just wanted to give that person a good gift and thought a rich friend had more expensive tastes, so they would prefer a more expensive item.”

Learn more: How to Buy Christmas Gifts with Your Credit Card Rewards

Income inequality, another driver

The gift calculation changes somewhat when the gift amount literally takes away from the giver. In a separate study Conducted by Max Alberhasky and Andrew Gershoff, study participants were asked to split a $100 gift card, a certain amount of their choice for themselves and the rest for a friend.

The result? Participants were more generous with their lower-income friends, splitting the $100 almost 50-50. As for their higher-income friends, they pocketed between $65 and $70 for themselves and gifted between $30 and $35.

The reason behind the discrepancy was “situational sympathy where you realize you’re grateful for what you have and your friend may not be so lucky,” said Alberhasky, an assistant professor of marketing at California State University. Long Beach.

“And that leads me to conclude that it might be okay to spend a little more on their gift than I otherwise would.”

This situational sympathy disappeared, however, if friends who earned less also worked fewer hours by choice rather than circumstance or did not work at all because they were living off a trust fund from their parents.

“If you remove sympathy, that should remove the desire to give more to these people,” said Gershoff, a marketing professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “And sure enough, that’s exactly what we find.”

Learn more: What is a vacation savings account?

Our feelings

How we feel when we choose gifts can also play a big role in how much we spend. A second unpublished study that Reshadi and Givi are working on examines how people focus on an item’s benefits rather than its price when buying it as a gift. If they were purchasing the item for themselves, cost is the most relevant factor.

“The reason people focus so much on benefits when buying gifts is because of what we call a warm glow,” said Givi, an assistant professor of marketing at West Virginia University. “You just focus on the fact that you’re going to make them smile and that makes you feel good. You just ignore the cost.”

The duo also looked at how gift-giving norms dictate how people feel about giving digital gift cards. When asked, gift givers would much rather give a physical gift card than a digital one in order to maintain the old-fashioned tradition of gift exchange.

“You should come to the gift exchange with a box that you could hand to me, and digital gift cards don’t really do that,” Givi said. “So donors are reluctant to offer them and that’s unfortunate because we find that recipients are more willing to receive them.”

Learn more: How a Balance Transfer Card Can Help Eliminate Holiday Debt

The recipient’s feelings

And perhaps this is what connects these many studies. The giver of the gift, whether unconsciously or not, cares about how they feel about the recipient or how they feel about the gift. There is not much focus on the actual recipient.

“If you spend too much money on gifts and the recipient doesn’t even like it, it will be a huge waste of money,” Reshadi said.

Instead, shop from the recipient’s perspective, she suggested. Think about what you like to receive as a gift and use that information to select gifts. Maybe a digital gift card isn’t so bad after all. Or maybe save your gift for another random time of year – a gift without any occasion.

“In one study, we found that giving a $5 Amazon gift card out of the blue made people as happy as giving a $50 Amazon gift card on their birthday,” Givi said .

Maybe it’s really the thought that counts.

Janna Herron is a senior columnist at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on @JannaHerron.

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