Have you ever splashed out (花大笔钱) on a present for someone you love, spending far more than you would on yourself? 【小题1】.

Splashing out on close relatives may be related to evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology claims that, given the level of familiarity, relatives will usually be given more. 【小题2】. “Since my close relatives share more genes with me, natural selection has selected for the way of investing in close relatives,” says Sigal Tifferet.

Our emotional intelligence (or EQ) may also play a role in determining the extent to which we splash out. Those with higher EQ spent more money on gifts for others, especially people they were close to. 【小题3】. “The idea is that people with higher emotional understanding can better predict their own emotions, as well as those of the receiver,” Pillai says.

【小题4】. Experts have recognized plenty of others reasons, from cheering someone up to the self-interested. One interesting finding was that married couples in the US, where the divorce rate is high, gave more gifts to each other than married couples in Japan, where the divorce rate is relatively low.       

Yet if we splash out on friends or relatives, that may be nothing compared to what we spend on our kids. Again, this may be partly down to evolution — a desire by the old generation to help descendants(后代). Research suggests that the lower your income, the bigger part of it you spend on children, compared to more wealthy families. 【小题5】.