By Don Finley - Express-News
The researchers also found they could take a group of college students and manipulate those individualist-versus-collectivist impulses a bit, which in turn influenced how thirsty those students were for beer.
“Previous research on this had shown a correlation between individualism and impulsive buying,” said L.J. Shrum, marketing department chairman at UTSA, who with lead author and marketing Assistant Professor Yinlong Zhang conducted the study published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
In Hofstede's scale, the United States ranks highest in individualism, followed by Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Canada and Italy.
“The definition of an individualist is that we act on our attitudes, we be ourselves,” Shrum said. “Whereas in collectivist societies that's more frowned upon, and you want to make sure you reflect on the good of the group.”
But the real picture is even more complex, Shrum said. All people have some degree of both individualism and collectivism, with one side more dominant. And by getting people to focus on themselves or their families and friends, psychologists can bring either trait to the surface.
And that's what Zhang and Shrum did with 128 undergraduate business students (all of legal drinking age). When they temporarily induced the students to become individualists, they became thirstier for beer. Collectivists became less so. And those impulses were heightened when the students were asked to imagine themselves at a bar with friends.
While such knowledge might be put to effective use in beer ads, Shrum said that wasn't the study's purpose.
“If you were designing a public service announcement for people, you make the message more appealing if you have them in the right mindset. If they're in the wrong mindset, it goes in the opposite way.”