Social Exclusion and Consumers' Social Identity Goals: The Moderating Role of Cultural Self-Construal

Previous studies on the Structural Alignment Model suggest that people compare the alignable attributes and nonalignable attributes during the decision-making process and preference formation process. Alignable attributes are easier to process and more effective in clue extracting. Thus, it is believed that people rely more on alignable than nonalignable attributes when comparing alternatives. This article supposes that consumers’ product experience and personal characteristics also play a significant role in regulating consumers’ reliance on attribute alignability. The authors conducted three experiments to examine the moderating role of consumers’ product familiarity and self-construal in the impact of attribute alignability on consumer product purchase. The results show the following: (1) When making a purchase decision, consumers with a high level of product familiarity will rely more on nonalignable attributes, while those with a low level of product familiarity will rely more on alignable attributes. (2) The difference in consumer dependency on attribute alignability is driven by their perceived diagnosticity of attributes. (3) The dependency of consumers with different levels of familiarity on attribute alignability will be further influenced by consumers’ self-construal. Individuals with interdependent self-construal rely more on alignable attributes when unfamiliar with the product, while relying more on nonalignable attributes when familiar with the product. Individuals with independent self-construal, however, rely more on nonalignable attributes regardless of the degree of product familiarity. The conclusions of this paper can be used as references for enterprises to establish product positioning and communication strategies.

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Introducing the Sociopolitical Motive × Intergroup Threat Model to Understand How Monoracial Perceivers’ Sociopolitical Motives Influence Their Categorization of Multiracial People

Personality and Social Psychology Review ◽

10.1177/1088868320917051 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 260-286 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Arnold K. Ho ◽

Nour S. Kteily ◽

Jacqueline M. Chen

Keyword(s):

Social Identity ◽

Social Dominance ◽

Research Area ◽

System Justification ◽

Group Status ◽

Intergroup Threat ◽

Threat Model ◽

Racial Categorization ◽

Moderating Role

Researchers have used social dominance, system justification, authoritarianism, and social identity theories to understand how monoracial perceivers’ sociopolitical motives influence their categorization of multiracial people. The result has been a growing understanding of how particular sociopolitical motives and contexts affect categorization, without a unifying perspective to integrate these insights. We review evidence supporting each theory’s predictions concerning how monoracial perceivers categorize multiracial people who combine their ingroup with an outgroup, with attention to the moderating role of perceiver group status. We find most studies cannot arbitrate between theories of categorization and reveal additional gaps in the literature. To advance this research area, we introduce the sociopolitical motive × intergroup threat model of racial categorization that (a) clarifies which sociopolitical motives interact with which intergroup threats to predict categorization and (b) highlights the role of perceiver group status. Furthermore, we consider how our model can help understand phenomena beyond multiracial categorization.

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