The DOI matches its Crossref record; 19 of the 19 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Choice as an act of meaning: The case of social class.
Abstract
Social class is one important source of models of agency--normative guidelines for how to be a "good" person. Using choice as a prototypically agentic action, 5 studies test the hypotheses that models of agency prevalent in working-class (WK) contexts reflect a normative preference for similarity to others, whereas models prevalent in middle-class (MD) contexts reflect a preference for difference from others. Focusing on participants' choices, Studies 1 and 2 showed that participants from WK relative to MD contexts more often chose pens that appeared similar to, rather than different from, other pens in the choice set, and more often chose the same images as another participant. Examining participants' responses to others' choices, Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated that participants from WK relative to MD contexts liked their chosen pens more when a confederate chose similarly and responded more positively when a friend chose the same car in a hypothetical scenario. Finally, Study 5 found that car advertisements targeting WK rather than MD consumers more often emphasized connection to, rather than differentiation from, others, suggesting that models of agency are reflected in pervasive cultural products.
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Cites
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“As with most normative or cultural ideas, however, people are often not explicitly aware of the models of agency that lend structure and meaning to their behavior, and thus typically cannot identify their content (see D. T. Miller, 2006; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Wilson, 2004).”
BackgroundMethodResultInfluentialImplicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes
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Cited by
The weirdest people in the world?
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x0999152x · Cited by 12,641
Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior.
Piff, P. K., Kraus, M. W., Côté, S., Cheng, B. H., & Keltner, D. (2010) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0020092 · Cited by 1,478
Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor.
Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K., Mendoza-Denton, R., Rheinschmidt, M. L., & Keltner, D. (2012) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/a0028756 · Cited by 1,397
Stephens, N. M., Fryberg, S. A., Markus, H. R., Johnson, C. S., & Covarrubias, R. (2012) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0027143 · Cited by 1,312
Self-citationVansteenkiste, M., Niemiec, C. P., & Soenens, B. (2010) · Advances in Motivation and Achievement · doi:10.1108/s0749-7423(2010)000016a007 · Cited by 864
Metadata
- Authors
- Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., & Townsend, S. S. M.
- Venue
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Published
- 2007-11
- Volume
- 93
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 814-830
- ISSN
- 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-1315
- OpenAlex
- W2108647191
- Cited by
- 536
- References
- 19
- FWCI
- 15.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
