"What shall I give?" - an eternal question, joyful and agonising at the same time. Which gift can you choose for a man? For your wife? That is still the easy part - with people close to you a personalised experience is always unique! But choosing a gift for a client is trickier. Knowing the temperaments will help: what gifts sanguines, cholerics, phlegmatics and melancholics look for is now known not only from psychoanalysis, but has also been checked statistically in market research.
For the busiest readers, here is a summary of the main conclusions:
- Sanguines look for everything that makes them beautiful and... buy books (which is unexpected)
- Melancholics go for everything that makes a home cosy, and they are also the ones who buy a lot of children’s things. Once again it is confirmed that most melancholics are women
- Cholerics are avid gamers and gadget lovers
- Phlegmatics can be given anything from the do-it-yourself builder’s range. And if you have firewood, give it to a phlegmatic))))
These conclusions are taken from analyses by the company DataFuel, which uses temperaments in marketing. They are presented to you here because market statistics for the most part match the psychoanalytic hypothesis of the S-Theory
So, a reminder: there are four temperaments — sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic. Theories of temperament are almost three thousand years old, going back to Hippocrates, and over the past 20 years the field has flourished in practical terms.
We, for instance, use them not only as part of determining personality types, but also for compatibility in private life.
The company DataFuel arrived at a very similar methodology on its own. In December 2022 it collected almost 48 million user queries from people with different temperaments in order to work out what they were looking to buy.
The result (vk.com/datafuel?w=wall-68884413_1916 ), apart from one surprise, for the most part matches what we, as counsellors and profilers, would have expected. You will find the DataFuel original at the bottom of the article; below is our interpretation.
Since a good many market analyses of temperament preferences have accumulated by now (a dozen of them already: about gifts, about cars, about preferred words, about professions, and so on and so forth), we have gathered them into a mini-app. At the top you choose the research topic, at the bottom you switch between temperaments and see what they like, look for and adore.
"Colour marks the queries whose volume stands out significantly against the general background. The centre of the map is normalised against the averages of the total collected coordinates (it lies very close to the VK averages). Given the large volume of semantics, the positioning of the audiences carries a certain margin of error, yet distance from the centre does indicate the strength of expression of the psycho-type (temperament).
The map may come in useful for sellers of certain goods. Give gifts, and do not forget to think carefully about how you advertise them".
What to give a Sanguine?
The sanguine is an active extravert. Inner themes: looking good, the buzz, showmanship. And the strongest of needs to draw attention to their own nature.
No wonder you will hit the mark with gifts to do with self-care and looking good. For example:
- a visit to a spa or a beauty salon
- a set of aromatic massage oils
- a hair mask and cosmetics
Anything to do with looking good and "playing the star" will fit here:
- a designer gift certificate
- a photo frame with an inscription
- a stylish poster or beautiful notebooks
It is unexpected, though, that educational literature for self-study is looked for precisely by sanguines. What do they need, for instance:
- books not only about photography and painting, but about business too,
- language and educational courses,
- a motivational planner?
What to give a Melancholic?
The melancholic is an extravert too. Only a homely, peaceable, patient and somewhat shy one.
Melancholics have a special trick for drawing attention to themselves while seeming to have nothing to do with it. They take up the arts — the more old-fashioned the better. And in the course of that enthusiasm they can talk about it at length. You will not go wrong if you give melancholics:
- a theatre ticket
- a ticket to a musical
- a concert ticket, or even a circus ticket
As "homely" people, melancholics also create a homely comfort. And that shows in their queries:
- tea sets and porcelain plates,
- home decorations, cushions, pictures for the wall
- a lamp, candlesticks, potted plants and, at a pinch, simply furniture.
It is entirely natural that among homely extraverts there are many women, and perhaps a majority. As DataFuel observed:
These are queries such as
- a magic set and a chemistry experiment kit
- a toy railway and a jigsaw puzzle
- board games and soft toys
What to give a Phlegmatic?
The phlegmatic is a homely introvert. He knows everything, values solitude and quietly gets on with his own business. The hermit sage is the hardest of all to please: "you will have to spend serious money on a snowmobile or go deep into a remote village, and there firewood always comes in handy about the house". But which of the temperaments would think of giving firewood as a present?
If you picture the sort of man who is forever shutting himself in the garage and building something in there, that is the classic Phlegmatic. And his gifts are of the same kind:
- a bicycle and an electric scooter
- a tool set and gloves
- winter tyres, car tools, a boat motor and a snowmobile
- and .... firewood
Introverts also like solitary sports. Their ideal rest is to shut themselves away and read a book. Which shows in their queries:
- skis, skates, a fitness set and a home exercise machine
- a gym membership
- an audiobook and a desk clock
What to give a Choleric?
The choleric is an active introvert. Pushy, aggressive, dominant, setting his own order and his own rules.
Have you ever asked yourself who gamers are? Who is crazy about gadgets, computers and electronics? Now you know, and it is proven — they are Cholerics
Gifts for them can be summed up by the phrase "everything for gamers":
- computer and video games, games consoles,
- programming courses, software and a VPN for downloading smartphone apps
- a laptop, a monitor, headphones and professional microphones
Cholerics also turned out to be the main consumers of films and media products. And for that they need plenty of gadgets, video cameras, music players and iPhones
The map by DataFuel
Above you can leaf through the interactive gift map. We took the data, translating it into the language of psychoanalytic theory, from the original DataFuel study, which looks like this:
As they write, "A personalised experience is always unique! That is exactly why on a journey across the gift map there is not and cannot beAs they write, "A personalised experience is always unique! That is exactly why on a journey across the gift map there is not and cannot be a single correct route".
But we do not agree with that: there is a route, and it runs like a red thread through your personality type. Find out what it is!
