The Effect of Group Membership Salience on the Avoidance of Negative Outcomes: Implications for Social and Consumer Decisions

Calling consumers ’ attention to their cultural identity can make them aware of their membership in a group and, therefore, can induce a group mind-set. This mind-set, in turn, leads them to make decisions that minimize the risk of negative out-comes to both themselves and others. The effects of this mind-set generalize over both group and individual choice situations. These possibilities were confirmed in a series of six experiments. Results showed that making people feel part of an ad hoc group increased not only their use of equality as a basis for allocating resources to themselves and others, but also their tendency to compromise in individual consumer choice situations. Moreover, calling Asian and Western participants’ attention to their cultural identity also induced feelings of being part of a group and, as a result, had analogous effects on decisions in both group and consumer choice situations. Research and theory on consumer behavior must takeinto account the way in which individuals ’ cultural backgrounds influence their judgments and decisions. An understanding of this influence, however, is complicated