Fog causes flight cancellations and delays … and it’s not over
When it comes to the science of giving, it looks like we have it wrong. Here’s how to avoid what’s been called the ‘deadweight loss of Christmas,’ writes
As the last-minute Christmas travel rush hits the UAE, thick fog has caused flight cancellations and delays of up to six hours.
And on the roads, the National Centre for Meteorology and Seismology warned of horizontal visibility as low as 100 metres as the fog, which has been at its worst overnight, is expected to continue through this morning and tomorrow.
Several Etihad flights were disrupted over the weekend, with flight EY250 to Kozhikode, India, six hours late to depart.
A spokesman for Abu Dhabi International Airport said that management anticipated further issues into the morning today and that flight schedules might be affected over the coming days.
They advised travellers to check the status of their flights before heading to the airport.
Yesterday, flight operations returned to normal at 11.30am. But with the fog at its heaviest after midnight and before 10am, further disruption was expected overnight.
The weather bureau warned of fog formation causing poor visibility of less than 100 metres over some areas.
They said that this sort of weather was normal for this time of the year.
In Dubai, police warned drivers to leave a safe distance between vehicles as fog covered major arteries.
No accidents were reported by Dubai or Abu Dhabi Police.
A chance of mist or fog formation is expected to continue overnight, as the relative humidity will increase into the early morning.
Daytime highs across most of the country will reach between 23°C and 28°C today with light to moderate winds.
In the mountains, temperatures will peak between 14°C and 20°C.
By this time tomorrow, all the stress, decision-making and expenditure will finally be over. Well, until it’s time to go Christmas shopping again. It might be called the festive season but the gift-buying part is often anything but joyful. And even when it’s over, there’s that odd sense of a job done but not done well.
There’s a reason for that. Researchers have identified the rules of gift-giving and it’s clear many of us break every one. Get to know these rules, however, and not only will you be better at choosing gifts, but it will make the often painful process simpler and less expensive.
Just how bad we are at giving presents has been quantified by Yale University economist Joel Waldfogel, who coined the term “deadweight loss of Christmas” to describe personal wealth destroyed by buying unwanted gifts each year.
Mr Waldfogel said that for every dollar spent on gifts, about 30 per cent is wasted and with winter holiday gift expenditure in the US exceeding half a trillion dollars, that’s a lot of waste.
Research reveals there’s a hit-and-miss process at work and it’s best to avoid that by asking the recipient what they want
According to advisory company CEB TowerGroup, about US$1 billion (Dh3.67bn) worth of gift cards are not redeemed each year.
So what are we doing wrong? Research by psychologists reveals that we’re just bad at predicting what the recipient will think of our gift.
There’s an obvious, if unexciting, remedy – find out what each person really wants and give it to them. A 2011 study by Francesca Gino and Francis Flynn of Harvard and Stanford business schools showed that people really are happier receiving gifts they have requested than they are with surprises.
It may seem cold or unimaginative, but in a classic demonstration of the pitfalls of gift-buying, the researchers found that people resented having their explicit request ignored in favour of something else.
Why? Because it was seen to be the giver trying to prove how imaginative they are as more important than meeting the recipient’s request.
So what about showing what a tin ear you have for gift-buying by ignoring the recipient’s request and giving them something linked to a worthy cause? With its promise of being a “gift that gives twice”, charitable donations have become increasingly popular with gift buyers.
These gifts would appear especially suited for those we don’t know very well. After all, who could resent having their name on a certificate showing they were helping a good cause?
But according to a study by Prof Lisa Cavanaugh, now at the University of British Columbia, and colleagues, this is a bad gift choice. Such gifts are rife with mismatched perceptions.
While they might make givers feel good about themselves, recipients can feel they’ve been used as an excuse to indulge in some virtue-signalling. The researchers found that while close friends might be okay with this, more distant friends are very likely to resent it.
Back in the 1970s, researchers thought the perfect gift should aim to make the recipient feel unique. But it’s now clear that any definition of the perfect gift must take into account the closeness of the relationship between the giver and receiver, as well as how it might look from the recipient’s perspective, which is far from easy.
There’s one widely held belief that research does support: price alone has no bearing on whether a gift is appreciated.
Working with fellow Stanford researcher Gabrielle Adams, Prof Flynn compared the beliefs of those buying an expensive gift with the actual level of appreciation from the recipients.
The researchers found that while those giving the gift expected price to correlate with appreciation, there was no link at all.
But the most startling proof of the mismatch between perception and reality centres on perhaps the most unimaginative gift of all – cash.
Gino and Flynn found that while people believe this choice will be treated with contempt, it’s typically much appreciated. In fact, more so than a similarly priced gift on a person’s wish-list.
Quite why isn’t clear. But the lesson is as stark as the title of Gino and Flynn’s paper – when it comes to giving gifts,
Give them What they Want.
The secret to successful gift-buying, it seems, is to keep it simple and stick to wish-lists or explicit requests and badger recipients for guidance. If that fails, give them money.
If, despite all the evidence, you still think you know what you’re doing and opt to give a surprise gift, then follow the advice of the US National Retail Federation and include the receipt, just in case you’ve failed to hit the spot.
Of course, all this presumes that the gift has been chosen with the best of intentions, but that’s not always the case.
A study last year by Dr Deborah Cohn of New York Institute of Technology identified where the giver really doesn’t care what the recipient thinks, or wants to send a message.
These include “to you, for me” gifts, where it’s clear that the gift is going to benefit the giver at least as much as the recipient, and “aggressive” gifts.
Dr Cohn tells of a case of the latter, as a mother who had a row with her daughter before Christmas. On the big day, she gave her daughter a gift of a pocket knife, a bar of chocolate and a card saying “Good luck in the wild”.
Here’s hoping for something more congenial from Santa tomorrow. But failing that, at least some cash.