Abstract
Previous research has suggested that stability of self-concept differs across cultures: in North American cultural contexts, people’s self-concept is stable across social contexts, whereas in Japan, different self-concepts are activated within specific social contexts. We examined the implications of this cultural difference for preference-choice consistency, which is people’s tendency to make choices that are consistent with their preferences. We found that Japanese were less likely than Americans to choose items that they liked the most, showing preference-choice inconsistency. We also investigated the conditions in which Japanese might exhibit greater preference-choice consistency. Consistent with research showing that in Japanese culture, the self is primarily conceptualized and activated by social contexts, we found that subtle social cues (e.g., schematic representations of human faces) increased preference-choice consistency among Japanese, but not among Americans. These findings highlight that choices do not reveal preferences to the same extent in all cultures, and that the extent to which choices reveal preferences depends on the social context.
Highlights
IntroductionPeople in affluent modern societies make numerous choices in their daily lives, for example, choosing cookies from 85 options in a American supermarket, or choosing from over 100 different types of seafood in a Japanese supermarket
Choice and Agency Model across CulturesPeople in affluent modern societies make numerous choices in their daily lives, for example, choosing cookies from 85 options in a American supermarket, or choosing from over 100 different types of seafood in a Japanese supermarket
SCC was lower than PCC in Japan, but SCC was higher than PCC in the US. We interpret these findings to suggest that Japanese are not concerned if their choices are inconsistent with their preferences in front of others. They suggest that Study 1’s findings with Japanese participants is unlikely to be due to social concerns and is instead more likely due to the activation of a sense of self that values preference-choice consistency
Summary
People in affluent modern societies make numerous choices in their daily lives, for example, choosing cookies from 85 options in a American supermarket, or choosing from over 100 different types of seafood in a Japanese supermarket. Choice is an agentic behavior that is likely based on people’s internal states, such as their preferences or attitudes. Past research has shown that making choices based on one’s own preferences is observed more frequently in European-American cultural contexts than in Asian cultural contexts (Iyengar and Lepper, 1999; Savani et al, 2008). We ask whether people in Japan make choices based on their preferences when their sense of agency is activated by subtle social context cues, whereas people in the US choose in accordance with their preferences regardless of the presence or absence of social cues
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