CULTURED MINDS
An Investigation of How Culture Affects Decision Making
FOLK THEORIES
A folk theory is a naive model/idea about how the world works, which influences the behaviours of people who subscribe to it. Cultures can be described in terms of these widely-shared implicit folk theories. Folk theory researchers have focused on identify[ing] and measuring implicit folk theories at the level that ties directly into inference and judgment (Ames, D. R., & Knowles, E. D., 2000). The entity/incremental, dispositionist/situationist and dialectical folk theories are particularly important for evaluating and predicting consumer behaviour.
Dispositionism/Situationism
Dispositionism is the belief that behaviour results from personal attributes/personality (Kunda & Nisbett, 1986). This folk theory can produce mistaken beliefs about the consistency of individual differences and leads to correspondence bias and fundamental attribution error. It is more endorsed by westerners e.g USA whereas Easterners appear to favour the situationist perspective (Nisbett, 2002)
In contrast, situationists believe that events are often caused by contextual rather than personal factors. They tend to be less prone to the above biases (Nisbett & Norenzayan, 1998).
Entity/Incremental
The Entity view suggests that people’s attributes and personality are largely fixed as they go through life and cannot be changed by personal efforts. The Incremental view proposes that people’s attributes are malleable and amenable to self-improvement (Dweck; 1996 cited in Ames & Knowles, 2000; Dweck,1997)
This distinction has important consequences for how consumers relate to brands (John, 2010) For example, a study found that Entity theorists perceived themselves to be better looking, more feminine, and more glamorous after using a Victoria’s Secret shopping bag, whilst Incremental theorists were unaffected.
Dialectics
Dialectics is a belief system described as “a facet of the broader, overarching interpretive construct of holism” (Spencer-Rodgers, Williams & Peng, 2010) The dialectical world view endorses the idea of change and constant reversal. True balance involves the fusion of both negatives and positives (as symbolised by the Yin and Yang), thus dialecticism encompasses a tolerance for holding apparently contradictory beliefs. It also includes the idea of interconnection: to regard something in isolation is to see it distorted ‘because the parts are meaningful only in relation to the whole’ (Nisbett & Peng 1999).
East Asians (e.g Chinese) are thought to be more inclined towards dialecticism whilst Westerners (e.g USA) tend to prefer analytic thought. However, this is a generalisation is relevant to cultures/countries as a whole - not individuals. For example, (Basseches, 1980 cited in Kahle, Liu, Rose & Kim, 2000) found that within institutions faculty members tend to use dialectical thinking more than students and (Kahle, Liu, Rose & Kim, 2000) suggests that education, occupation and intelligence should also influence individuals’ tendencies to reason dialectically.
Also note that a preference for dialectical reasoning has similarities with the collectivist emphasis on relationships and holistic thinking. But the two do not always co-exist, for example, Chileans are highly collectivist but not dialectical in their reasoning (Schimmack, Oishi & Diener, 2002)
Basic Principles of Dialectical Thinking
Interconnection - All events and objects are connected and affect each other in some way. Nothing happens in isolation.
Continuous change/development - The world is in a state of constant flux (e.g growth, dying)
Reversal - Extremes will always reverse (e.g as night turns into day or the way a pendulum swings from one side to another)
Opposites - in all good there is some bad, and vice versa. It is key to take into account the whole: including both positive & negative aspects.
(Peng & Nisbett, 1999; Kahle, Liu, Rose & Kim, 2000; Spencer-Rodgers, Williams & Peng, 2010)