Individualism and the Extended-Self: Cross-Cultural Differences in the Valuation of Authentic Objects

Nathalia L Gjersoe,Bruce Hood,George E Newman,Vladimir Chituc

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0090787

Nathalia L Gjersoe, Bruce Hood + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0090787

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Mar 21, 2014
Citations: 59	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: The Open University, University of Bristol, Yale University

Abstract

The current studies examine how valuation of authentic items varies as a function of culture. We find that U.S. respondents value authentic items associated with individual persons (a sweater or an artwork) more than Indian respondents, but that both cultures value authentic objects not associated with persons (a dinosaur bone or a moon rock) equally. These differences cannot be attributed to more general cultural differences in the value assigned to authenticity. Rather, the results support the hypothesis that individualistic cultures place a greater value on objects associated with unique persons and in so doing, offer the first evidence for how valuation of certain authentic items may vary cross-culturally.

Highlights

Traders in celebrity memorabilia, such as Darren Julien— founder and president of one of the world’s largest celebrity memorabilia auction houses - have noted that despite an increasing demand for investment opportunities in Eastern countries, interest in memorabilia is not yet as strong as it is in the United States and may be driven by very different motivations
The primary goal of this paper was to explore how valuation of authentic items may vary as a function of culture
In the experiment and its replication, we found that U.S respondents placed significantly more value than Indian respondents on authentic contagion items associated with individual persons

Summary

Introduction

Traders in celebrity memorabilia, such as Darren Julien— founder and president of one of the world’s largest celebrity memorabilia auction houses - have noted that despite an increasing demand for investment opportunities in Eastern countries, interest in memorabilia is not yet as strong as it is in the United States and may be driven by very different motivations (personal communication). Belk (1988) explains how we become ‘contaminated’ in both positive and negative ways through contact with people’s possessions (see [4,5,6,7]). These notions of the extended-self and contamination (or, contagion) have been used to explain people’s desire to own celebrity memorabilia in the West. This work builds upon a larger literature on ‘‘magical thinking,’’ which has demonstrated belief in contagion in both primitive cultures [9] and scientifically educated adults [6,7,10,11,12]

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