Selecting the special or choosing the common? A high-powered conceptual replication of Kim and Markus’ (1999) pen study

ABSTRACT

Kim and Markus (1999; Study 3) found that 74% of European Americans selected a pen with an uncommon (vs. common) color, whereas only 24% of East 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. The present high-powered study (N = 729) conceptually replicates the results from Kim and Markus (1999; Study 3), although our effect size (r = .12) is significantly weaker than that of the original study (r = .52). Interestingly, a larger proportion of Chinese, but not US, participants selected a pen with an uncommon color now than during the original study. Thus, our findings indicate a potential transmission of certain Western values to cultures traditionally characterized by collectivism and conformity, likely exacerbated by the globalization of mass media and the rapid economic growth in many East Asian countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-cultural
• replication
• self-construal
• collectivist
• individualistic
• uniqueness

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant awarded to the first author from the Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/tdfvs

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/tdfvs.

Notes

1. The interpretation of these findings has been debated. For example, Yamagishi et al. (2008) argued that culture-specific preferences for uniqueness (Kim & Markus, 1999) are simply strategies employed to achieve the most favorable outcome in a given setting, with default settings varying across cultures. Thus, although Japanese participants were less likely to choose a unique pen color in the “default setting” than their American counterparts, they were equally likely to do so when they were not concerned about the reactions of others–when they were informed that no one would choose a pen after them or that they were buying a pen in a store. The likelihood that the American participants selected the unique option was similar to that of Japanese participants when they were informed that they would be the first of five people to select a pen. This suggests that considering the reactions of others plays a critical role in decision-making in the unique (vs. common) context (Yamagishi et al., 2008).

2. Consistent with Kim and Markus (1999), participants’ gender was unassociated with pen choice, and controlling for this demographic variable in the analyses did not change the nature or significance of our results.

3. The fact that there was a larger proportion of Chinese (vs. US) participants whose country of birth did not match their current nationality can potentially be seen as a further validation our main thesis that there have been more cultural changes in China than in the US during the last decades.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond [28207].

Notes on contributors

Tobias Otterbring

Tobias Otterbring, PhD Psychology, is Professor of Marketing at the University of Agder. His research focuses on how the real or implied presence of other individuals influences people’s cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. Otterbring serves or has served as a Guest Editor in several journals, including Journal of Business Research, Psychology & Marketing, European Journal of Marketing, and Personality & Individual Differences. His work has appeared in journals such as Nature Communications, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Journal of Marketing Research, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Personality and Individual Differences, and Psychology & Marketing.

Roopali Bhatnagar

Dr. Roopali Bhatnagar is a researcher at Aarhus University School of Business and Social Sciences (Denmark) and visiting researcher at The Danish Center for Social Science Research (Denmark). Her research focuses on visual attention, consumer behavior, and sensory marketing, and her work has been published in journals like Nature Scientific Reports and Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Michał Folwarczny

Michał Folwarczny, PhD Marketing, is a researcher at Reykjavik University. His studies focus on explaining and predicting consumer behavior - especially related to food choices and conspicuous consumption - using the evolutionary lens. He applies a variety of research methods ranging from web scraping to field experiments. His research has been published in journals such as Social Psychological and Personality Science, Personality and Individual Differences, and Journal of Business Research.