Uchida Yukiko, Savani Krishna, Hitokoto Hidefumi, Kaino Koichi
Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University Kyoto, Japan.
Division of Strategy, Management, and Organization, Nanyang Business School Singapore, Singapore.
Front Psychol. 2017 Feb 21;8:169. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00169. eCollection 2017.
Previous research has suggested that stability of self-concept differs across cultures: in North American cultural contexts, people's self-concept is stable across social contexts, whereas in Japan, different self-concepts are activated within specific social contexts. We examined the implications of this cultural difference for preference-choice consistency, which is people's tendency to make choices that are consistent with their preferences. We found that Japanese were less likely than Americans to choose items that they liked the most, showing preference-choice inconsistency. We also investigated the conditions in which Japanese might exhibit greater preference-choice consistency. Consistent with research showing that in Japanese culture, the self is primarily conceptualized and activated by social contexts, we found that subtle social cues (e.g., schematic representations of human faces) increased preference-choice consistency among Japanese, but not among Americans. These findings highlight that choices do not reveal preferences to the same extent in all cultures, and that the extent to which choices reveal preferences depends on the social context.
以往的研究表明，自我概念的稳定性在不同文化中存在差异：在北美文化背景下，人们的自我概念在不同社会情境中保持稳定，而在日本，特定社会情境会激活不同的自我概念。我们研究了这种文化差异对偏好选择一致性的影响，偏好选择一致性是指人们做出与其偏好相符选择的倾向。我们发现，日本人比美国人更不可能选择他们最喜欢的物品，表现出偏好选择不一致。我们还研究了日本人可能表现出更高偏好选择一致性的条件。与表明在日本文化中，自我主要由社会情境概念化并激活的研究一致，我们发现微妙的社会线索（例如人脸的示意性表征）增加了日本人的偏好选择一致性，但对美国人没有影响。这些发现凸显出，在所有文化中，选择揭示偏好的程度不尽相同，而且选择揭示偏好的程度取决于社会情境。
