According to research out of the University of Wisconsin School of Business, buying the same thing for yourself makes the gift even more special to the recipient. There’s even a name for it: companionizing.
“Recipients end up liking the gift more because it’s shared,” says Evan Polman, a UW marketing professor, who conducted the research with Sam Maglio, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. They published the results of their study in July in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.