Just what I always wanted (not): Receive gifts gracefully

Whatever you think about Christmas - wonderful, a tyranny, excessive, irrelevant - the chances are that at some point during festivities, you will have to unwrap a present in front of the person who chose it for you.

- Elizabeth Stokoe, professor of social interaction, Loughborough University, and Jessica Robles, lecturer in social psychology, Loughborough University.

Perhaps it will be a gift that leaves you speechless with delight, overwhelmed with gratitude and affection towards the giver who clearly knows you so well.

Or maybe you will open a present and wonder if the person giving it to you knows you at all. Do they seriously think you'll love the unwanted item you find yourself staring at? Now you must react. So what should you do?

The giving and receiving of gifts is a human ritual full of social and cultural significance, which strengthens our bonds and relationships.

One major component of the interactive ritual is the reaction that accompanies the opening of a gift and follows its acceptance. Young children are less bound to such constraints, and are often more interested in the box than its contents. But as we grow older, we become socialised towards an appropriate reaction - learning by watching those around us.

Luckily, gift exchanges are not fundamentally different from the rest of human interaction, and a core feature of human communication is what conversation analysts call "recipient design". Recipient design refers to the way we construct or design our speech to fit with the person we are speaking to.

For example, you might begin a conversation with the phrase: "You know Jane, from the office?" But if your recipient doesn't know Jane, or what the office refers to, you might adjust your sentence to: "You know the woman who sits upstairs, at my work?"