Selecting the special or choosing the common? A high-powered replication of Kim and Markus’ (1999) pen study
Kim and Markus (1999) found that 74% of Americans selected a pen with an uncommon (vs. common) color, whereas only 24% of Asians made such a choice, highlighting a pronounced cross-cultural difference in the extent to which people opt for originality or make majority-based choices. Although influential, their original study relied on small sample size (N = 56), falling short of current standards for sample size estimation and power calculations. The present high-powered study (N = 729) replicates the overall findings from Kim and Markus (1999; Study 3), finding that American participants were significantly more inclined to make an uncommon choice (62.5%) compared to their Chinese counterparts (50%). However, our obtained effect size (r = .12) is significantly weaker than that of the original study (r = .50). Interestingly, given the globalization of mass media and the rapid economic progress of many Asian cultures during the last decades, a significantly larger proportion of Chinese, but not American, participants selected a pen with an uncommon color now than during the time of the original study. As such, mass media may have exported certain Western values to cultures traditionally characterized by collectivism and conformity, making such cultures more individualistic.