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Why is it that when so many of us ask our friends and relatives what they want for Christmas, we listen to their ideas and then completely ignore them?

Your mother says she wants a new muffin tin, but you decide what she really wants is lessons at that new cooking school. You think she's going to love your creative idea. But instead, she's irritated that she still needs to go buy a new muffin tin and that you've just subtly told her you don't like her cooking.

Frank Flynn, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business says when it comes to gift giving, most people are simply not listening to what others want. It's something he sees in the business world during the give and take of negotiations, and it's something that happens every year at holiday time, too.

Flynn has conducted a number of studies over the years on gift-giving, seeking answers to such quandaries as: Are wish lists crass or practical? Do recipients value a gift more if we came up with the idea on our own? Should wish lists even be needed in close relationships?

He's discovered two essential truths: 1) recipients almost always prefer a gift they asked for over a surprise gift; and 2) gift givers have a hard time believing it.

"Even when people tell us what they want, for some reason, we often refuse to listen to them," Flynn tells CTVNews.ca from Stanford, Calif.

Earlier this year, Flynn published a paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in which he conducted a number of studies to test how much recipients appreciated unsolicited gifts. In one, he had some volunteers draw up a birthday gift wish list off an online shopping website. He asked one group of study subjects to select a gift to give from that list, while another group was told to come up with their own gift idea in a similar price range.

Most of those who were told to ignore the wish list thought that the recipients would see their surprise gifts as more thoughtful and considerate. Instead, the recipients said they were more appreciative of the gifts they'd specifically asked for.

Another study using wedding gift registries yielded similar results. Brides and grooms felt more appreciation for gifts they remember being given off their registry, compared to "unsolicited" gifts. Yet, once again, gift givers assumed their unsolicited gifts would be well received.

Over and over again, Flynn found that when people ask for specific gifts using wish lists or gift registries, they're going to be happier if you just stick to the list.

That advice might be fine for situations when we don't know someone's tastes very well. But about significant others, the ones we're supposed to know inside and out? If we know them well enough, surely we can find them an amazing gift all on our own, right?

Don't count on it; spouse and partner situations can be even more of a minefield. Flynn says if your partner takes the time to draw up a wish list and you choose to ignore it, not only are you risking making a disappointing gift choice, your partner might also be disappointed with you.

"If your significant other is telling you, ‘Hey I'd really like you to get me this thing,' and then you choose something else, they can't help but conclude that you weren't even listening to them at all," Flynn says.

The odd thing is that most of us know this perfectly well. We know how irritating it can be to get a gift you really don't want when you had your heart set on something else. And yet we ignore our own experience.

"We think to ourselves, ‘Sure, I could get them that camera they specifically asked me to get, but that would just be me executing their instructions. That's not going to show special consideration. But if I do something different, that could be more appreciated.' But that doesn't account for the fact they'll be irked by the fact that their request was completely ignored," Flynn says.

So why do we gamble? Why do we pass over items on wish lists and shoot for that elusive "perfect gift" we think we can dream up on our own?

"I think we really believe that it'll be considered more thoughtful if we come up with it on our own. But given how difficult it is for someone to figure out what someone else wants, we often get it wrong," Flynn says.

We buy them the book we think they should read, not the one they will read. We buy them the red because we love red, when they really would have preferred the grey. We splurge on something expensive because we think their request was too modest.

We get our guesses wrong, because we're just not them.

"We have an inability to assume the other person's perspective, so not only their tastes, but also what drives their feelings of appreciation," says Flynn.

Given how easy it is to go wrong, it's a wonder anyone deviates from a loved one's wish list at all.

So perhaps this year, instead of trying to be the hero by dreaming up the perfect gift for your loved one all your own, take a page from Santa: if they've made a list, check it twice and then, just give them what they want.

This is the first of CTVNews.ca's regular gift-giving guide. Check back every Wednesday and Friday for a new instalment in our series.