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Divergence in Cultural Practices: Tastes as Signals of Identity
Abstract
Divergence is a fact of social life; people select different tastes to distinguish themselves from others and they abandon tastes when others adopt them. But while we know a great deal about conformity, it predicts convergence, and thus is less equipped to explain why people diverge. We suggest people diverge to maintain clear signals of identity. Our approach emphasizes that the meaning of signals is set at a social rather than individual level. Tastes gain signal value through association with groups or types of individuals, but become diluted when members of more than one type hold them. Thus different types of people will diverge in the tastes they select, and they will abandon tastes they previously liked when they are adopted by members of other social types. (127 words)
... Observational learning, mimicry of others behavior [10] Visible actions in networked interactions increase greater imitability (e.g., [2]) Imitation and divergence in behavior as a means of identity signaling [9] Dynamics of idea propagation, a result of two sided interaction in social media [36] ...
... It has been posited that individuals tend to imitate others behaviors though mechanisms such as localized conformity [10], observational learning [10], mimetism [23,39] and identity signaling [9]. Imitation of behavior, when those choices are visible to others, is a form of seeking conformity and convergence with others they identify with and a way of signaling affinity [9]. ...
... It has been posited that individuals tend to imitate others behaviors though mechanisms such as localized conformity [10], observational learning [10], mimetism [23,39] and identity signaling [9]. Imitation of behavior, when those choices are visible to others, is a form of seeking conformity and convergence with others they identify with and a way of signaling affinity [9]. In online social networks, ideas or content act as memes (e.g., [44]), defined as a contagious unit of cultural information (e.g., [17]). ...
... However, idiosyncratic differences in stereotype relevance or personal importance are less useful in explaining why across groups people tend to diverge in certain domains (Studies 6 and 7). Different groups may have different idiosyncratic stereotypes, and particular individuals may find certain domains personally important, but across individuals and groups, people diverge more in domains that everyone uses to communicate identity (also see Berger & Heath, 2007;Berger, Heath, & Ho, 2008). Most honors students would not list clothing as personally important, and clothes are not particularly relevant to the group stereotype, but even so, they may abandon clothing tastes that are co-opted by outsiders because other people use that domain to make inferences about them. ...
... This article has focused on why people diverge when their tastes are poached by outsiders, but more research is necessary to examine why outsiders poach the tastes of others in the first place. People often want others to identify them and to treat them like the type of person they actually are, but sometimes they may want to be treated like members of other groups and, to reach this goal, may poach the cultural tastes of those groups (e.g., Berger, Heath, & Ho, 2008). Researchers know little about the poaching portion of the process. ...
People often diverge from members of other social groups: They select cultural tastes (e.g., possessions, attitudes, or behaviors) that distinguish them from outsiders and abandon tastes when outsiders adopt them. But while divergence is pervasive, most research on the propagation of culture is based on conformity. Consequently, it is less useful in explaining why people might abandon tastes when others adopt them. The 7 studies described in this article showed that people diverge to avoid signaling undesired identities. A field study, for example, found that undergraduates stopped wearing a particular wristband when members of the "geeky" academically focused dormitory next door started wearing them. Consistent with an identity-signaling perspective, the studies further showed that people often diverge from dissimilar outgroups to avoid the costs of misidentification. Implications for social influence, identity signaling, and the popularity and diffusion of culture are discussed.
... In the process whereby tastes gain 'signaling value' through their distinctiveness and costly adoption, cultural practices endowed with 'a functional component … [are] harder to interpret as [social] signals'. 118 Foodstuffs associated with such utilitarian objectives as nutrition or health are thus less likely to be coopted aesthetically in the contexts of cultural globalization and democratization, which have now deprived past exotic items, like the onceprestigious pineapple, of their 'social cachet'. 119 Culinary products of terroir, which can be detached from nutritional needs, asserted as art forms, and consumed aesthetically as haute cuisine, are therefore best coded as exclusionist consumption goods. ...
The epistemic and aesthetic dimensions of taste are always inscribed in conceptions of the social order that the discourse on taste simultaneously enacts and rationalizes, while veiling the logics of difference and power it thereby affirms and reproduces. This article illustrates the entanglement of social and intellectual hierarchies that anchors the resolution of the problem of taste in the mechanisms of social distinction and erasure. It does so by examining four socio-epistemic configurations in the history of Western knowledge. The first vignette contextualizes the original devaluation of taste in the competition between the Socratic philosophers and epistemic labourers whose elevation of taste disrupted the Athenian aristocratic order. The second vignette explores the entanglement of humoural theory with the racial and religious orders of the premodern age, as imperial encounters threatened European identity brought into contact with the tastes of others. The third vignette examines how the epistemic status of gustatory taste became anchored in the hierarchy of cultural taste within British empirical philosophy. Finally, the paper tracks new forms of social distinction in the resistance to the globalization of food systems and to the democratization of culinary tastes, as manifested in the constitution of an exclusivist ‘standard of taste’ for wine appreciation.
... ral item and is worn in a distinctly American style: backwards. A new look with the baseball cap is an update to the cinematic Rambo that keeps the balance between a paramilitary and skateboarder look. The baseball cap loses its functional purpose of shielding the eyes in the sun and turns into a fashion statement once the bill is turned backwards (Berger, et. al 2005). The film character Rambo did not wear a hat but rather a bandanna tied around his forehead, a fashion accessory applicable to the 1970s U.S. culture out of which he was born and which is reminiscent of Jimmy Hendrix or Bruce Springsteen. The CIA soldier on DS"s cover page has a bushy, thick beard. Taking Hollywood liberties with realit ...
How do we form aesthetic judgements? And how should we do so? According to a very prominent tradition in aesthetics it would be wrong to form our aesthetic judgements about a particular object on the basis of anything other than first-hand acquaintance with the object itself (or some very close surrogate) and, in particular, it would be wrong to form such judgements merely on the basis of testimony. Further this tradition presupposes that our actual practice of forming aesthetic judgements typically meets, or at least approximates, this ideal. In this paper I target this descriptive claim and argue—by appeal to some empirical work concerning belief polarization and echo chambers in aesthetics—that our actual practice of forming aesthetic judgements is heavily dependent on social sources such as testimony. I then briefly consider what normative implications this descriptive claim may have.
In online information settings, a few people tend to contribute, while the majority of people consume. For this latter group of readers, electronic word of mouth (eWOM) provides information about products or service experiences that rarely are available from manufacturer-controlled sources, which makes this source of information especially helpful. In turn, eWOM influences readers' attitudes, intentions, and behavior. Manufacturers also hope to monitor and positively influence eWOM content, such as by supporting and building brand communities. But eWOM readers might doubt the credibility of information if it is mostly positive, and the usefulness of eWOM information depends on its credibility. This study offers an empirical and theoretical validation of how specific utilitarian and social functions of eWOM affect attitudes toward and intentions to read eWOM. In particular, trustworthiness is the most important credibility dimension; it affects both functions. Perceived expertise also enhances the utilitarian while similarity improves the social function of eWOM.
Identity signaling is a strong motivator for human behavior. We investigate whether we can nudge people to higher goals with regard to showering time reduction if they perceive a possibility to signal their green identity. In a fictional saving campaign by a utility company people saw a postcard displaying either a trendy or a non-mainstream greenie and the amount of effort (shower time reduction) that is associated with a certain reference saving goal. They chose their individual goal on the back side. We suggest that people who aim at signaling their identity choose higher goals when energy saving is associated with a non-mainstream greenie and medium effort in order to send clear identity signals to others. Our results confirm our hypotheses. Identity signaling therefore nudges people towards higher saving goals
In a consumer culture people no longer consume for merely functional satisfaction,but consumption becomes meaning-based, and brands are often used as symbolic resources for theconstruction and maintenance of identity. All human behavior is a symbolic action. People are notjust choosing the best, the fanciest, or the cheapest brands. They’re choosing brands that have theright meaning. Brands are now creating value not just by the products or services they represent,but by the meanings they generate. This meaning is being adopted by consumers to express whothey are and what they stand for. Meaning, in fact, may be the most important product a brandcreates today.
We propose that consumers often make choices that diverge from those of others to ensure that they effectively communicate desired identities. Consistent with this identity-signaling perspective, four studies illustrate that consumers are more likely to diverge from majorities, or members of other social groups, in product domains that are seen as symbolic of identity (e.g., music or hairstyles, rather than backpacks or stereos). In identity domains, participants avoided options preferred by majorities and abandoned preferences shared with majorities. The social group associated with a product influenced choice more in identity domains and when a given product was framed as identity relevant. People diverge, in part, to avoid communicating undesired identities. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
Of recent interest in consumer behavior research is the consumer's use of owned possessions to develop and maintain self-concept. This study presents a measure of a central concept in this area–attachment. A conceptual definition of the construct is proposed and is related to social-cognitive theories of the self. The role of attachment in the relationship between people and possessions is discussed. Evidence is presented for the reliability and predictive validity of a simple measure of attachment and for the discriminant validity of the construct. Relationships between attachment and other important consumer behavior constructs are explored. © 1992, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Conveying a brand image to a target market is a fundamental marketing activity. The authors present a normative framework, termed brand concept management (BCM), for selecting, implementing, and controlling a brand image over time. The framework consists of a sequential process of selecting, introducing, elaborating, and fortifying a brand concept. The concept guides positioning strategies, and hence the brand image, at each of these stages. The method for maintaining this concept-image linkage depends on whether the brand concept is functional, symbolic, or experiential. Maintaining this linkage should significantly enhance the brand's market performance.
The question of whether lay attributors are biased in their discounting of 1 cause given an alternative cause has not been resolved by decades of research, largely due to the lack of a clear standard for the rational amount of discounting. The authors propose a normative model in which the attributor's causal schemas and discounting inferences are represented in terms of subjective probability. The analysis examines Kelley's (1972b) proposed causal schemas and then other schemas for multiple causes (varying in assumptions about prior probability, sufficiency, correlation, and number of causes) to determine when discounting is rational. It reveals that discounting is implied from most, but not all, possible causal schemas, albeit at varying amounts. Hence, certain patterns of discounting previously interpreted as biases may, in fact, reflect coherent inferences from causal schemas. Results of 2 studies, which measured causal assumptions and inferences, support this interpretation (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Most empirical work on product symbolism has paid relatively little attention to how products are used by consumers in everyday social life. This paper argues that the subjective experience imparted by the consumption of many products substantially contributes to the consumer's structuring of social reality, self-concept, and behavior. Moreover, the consumer often relies upon the social meanings inherent in products as a guide to the performance of social roles, especially when role demands are novel. While marketing theory traditionally views products as post hoc responses to underlying needs, the focus here is on conditions under which products serve as a priori stimuli to behavior. By integrating concepts adapted from symbolic interactionism, this approach stresses the importance of product symbolism as a mediator of self-definition and role performance.
The authors develop a theoretical framework of the fashion process and a mathematical model of that framework. Basic constructs related to an individual's motivations for adopting fashions are extracted from the fashion literature and related to the individual's fashion decision process. The individual-level model is then integrated into a societal-level framework that can be represented as a system of difference equations. The parameters of the system represent static interpersonal influence networks. The general solution for the system of difference equations is presented and the dynamic implications of several interpersonal influence patterns assumed in previous research are derived mathematically.
Nine themes on the effect of participation, identification, and career of fads, which appear in the collective behavior literature, are tested with data on 1,016 incidents of streaking at colleges and universities. Streaking diffused suddenly, gained quick acceptance, and was short-lived. Its diffusion corresponds to a positively skewed, rapidly accelerating slope, a brief and unstable asymptote, and a precipitous decline. The probability of streaking on college campuses increased with the institutional prestige of neighboring campuses that had experienced streaking, the number of sanctions they applied, the accuracy of the mass media coverage of previous streaking events, the level of complexity of previous streaking events, and the sociocultural heterogeneity of schools at risk of adoption. The research results support the predictions of the emergent-norm framework of collective behavior. Streaking incidents were heterogeneous suggesting that the oddness, impulsivity, inconsequentiality, novelty, and ahistoricity of fads have been exaggerated in the literature. Reformulations of the established conceptualization of fads are suggested.
This paper reviews the evolution and current state of fashion theory focusing on fashion life cycles. Fashion cycles are analyzed in two time frames, long run secular trends spanning decades and centuries, and short run acceptance of specific styles lasting several months to years. The emergence of new styles is described alternatively as a phenomenon propagated by the fashion industry and independent consumer behavior. Some needed theoretical developments, research, and managerial applications are discussed.
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This study was addressed to the question of whether “need for novelty” is a unitary dimension. Six instruments—four attitude inventories and two performance tasks—designed to measure originality, change, sensation-seeking, stimulus-seeking, change-seeking, and cognitive innovation were administered to college Ss. Resulting intercorrelations indicated moderate overlap among attitudinal measures, some overlap between attitude inventories and a performance task with primarily conceptual demands, and no overlap between attitude measures and a performance task with primarily motor demands. Implications for theory and research are discussed.
This article discusses the model of the diffusion of innovations and describes this model’s key variables. Diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. An innovation is an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption.
Conformity to the group is a complex phenomenon, which should be differentiated into several distinct psychological processes, and has often been contrasted with nonconformity or independence. This chapter describes the various aspects of conformity, public compliance and private change, conditions of responding, characteristics of the group, and nature of the task. Nonconformity consists of two conceptually distinct types of behavior, and may reflect independence, or it may actually be anticonformity. These three types of behavior—conformity, independence, and anticonformity—are related to each other as the apexes of a triangle. It makes a great deal of difference whether agreement with the group is public compliance, or true private change, or whether nonconformity represents independence or anticonformity. Although, there have been a few studies of generalization of conformity, little is known of the generality of conformity, and investigations have not been conducted on the generality of conformity across situations outside the laboratory. A subject in a conformity situation has information and beliefs about several important features of the situation: the task, other members of the group, and the experimenter. Theories of conformity, which have been advanced in recent years, include psychoanalytic, cognitive, reinforcement, and even mathematical models. Research should be directed toward understanding the variables that affect nonconformity, as well as conformity.
The chameleon effect refers to nonconscious mimicry of the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one's interaction partners, such that one's behavior passively rind unintentionally changes to match that of others in one's current social environment. The authors suggest that the mechanism involved is the perception-behavior link, the recently documented finding (e.g., J. A. Bargh, M. Chen, & L. Burrows, 1996) that the mere perception of another' s behavior automatically increases the likelihood of engaging in that behavior oneself Experiment 1 showed that the motor behavior of participants unintentionally matched that of strangers with whom they worked on a task. Experiment 2 had confederates mimic the posture and movements of participants and showed that mimicry facilitates the smoothness of interactions and increases liking between interaction partners. Experiment 3 showed that dispositionally empathic individuals exhibit the chameleon effect to a greater extent than do other people.
I. Introduction: fashion and economics, 376. — II. The state of fashion theory, 380. — III. The economic foundations of fashion,
385; the pursuit of rarity, 385; factor of demonstrability, 387; fashion as demonstrated command over current factors of production,
390. — IV. Some implications for economic fields, 393; value and welfare, 393; economic competition and organization, 395;
economic development and cycles, 396. — V. Conclusion, 398.
The exploratory study reported here attempts to identify if and how informal social groups influence the brand preferences of their members. The results suggest, first, that consumers are influenced by such groups and second, that the extent and degree of brand loyalty behavior within a group is more closely related to the behavior of the informal leader than to the cohesiveness of the group.
Results of a laboratory experiment indicate that in consumer decision making, in the absence of any objective standard, individuals tended to conform to the group norm. However, when the group pressure was to "go along" with the group, resulting in restriction of choices, the individuals tended to resist the group pressure.
I provide quantitative evidence of a cultural phenomenon. Using data on musical dislikes from the 1993 General Social Survey, I link literatures on taste, racism, and democratic liberalism by showing that people use cultural taste to reinforce symbolic boundaries between themselves and categories of people they dislike. Contrary to Bourdieu's (1984) prediction, musical exclusiveness decreases with education. Also, political tolerance is associated with musical tolerance, even controlling for educational attainment, and racism increases the probability of disliking genres whose fans are disproportionately non-White. Tolerant musical taste, however, is found to have a specific pattern of exclusiveness: Those genres whose fans have the least education - gospel, country, rap, and heavy metal - are also those most likely to be rejected by the musically tolerant. Broad familiarity with music genres is also significantly related to education. I suggest, therefore, that cultural tolerance constitutes multicultural capital as it is unevenly distributed in the population and evidences class-based exclusion.
This research examines concentration and similarity in the first name distributions of African Americans and whites resident in Mississippi in 1910. Data are drawn from the Public Use Sample of the 1910 Census, with names added from microfilm copies of original Census manuscripts. We find little difference in the degree of concentration of the name distributions and only modest dissimilarity in name choice. Multivariate analysis using age as a proxy for period of name assignment (birth cohort) indicates that racial differentiation in name choice increased over the period 1870 to 1910 primarily as a result of changes in the name choices of whites. We discuss these results in conjunction with the recent work of Lieberson and Bell (1992) on contemporary racial differences in naming patterns. Lieberson and Bell (1992) argue that African Americans in the contemporary period emphasize group differences by choosing “African” or “African sounding” names. In Mississippi in the period between the abolition of slavery and 1910, we argue that whites distanced themselves from African Americans by choosing increasingly the “whitest” names (e.g., those disproportionately chosen by whites). Changing naming patterns are not orchestrated group responses. Instead, they reflect emergent cultural responses to fundamental social change.
One characteristic of so-called post-industrial societies is the decline of material scarcity. Although great inequalities of wealth and income persist in American society, since World War II there has been a secular decline of poverty and an increase in material abundance. If this continues, it will ultimately destroy the customary status symbols of American society because such symbols—to be operative—must be scarce as well as desirable. Paradoxically, as abundance increases, the social importance of material things may diminish; thus, as American society becomes more materialistic, it may very well become less materialistic. Besides affluence, other developments are undermining the strength of conventional status symbols: social-class passing, status disguises, the environmental movement, and more. The usefulness of the concept of status itself in an urban setting must be called into question, as well as the so-called “trickle effect” in fashion. Finally, arguing that status symbols may be altered but never abolished, this analysis offers some hypotheses on the direction such symbols may take in the future.
According to uniqueness theory (Snyder & Fromkin, 1980), persons are motivated to maintain a sense of specialness as they define themselves on various important self-related dimensions relative to others. The need for uniqueness may vary across differing situations and persons; as such, a high need for uniqueness may be related to (a) forces in a given situation that promote an extreme sense of high similarity and (b) dispositional factors that influence the high need for uniqueness across a variety of situations. Because commodities are an important source for defining one's sense of self in Western culture, it is reasoned that scarce products provide a vehicle for establishing one's specialness when the need for uniqueness is activated. In support of this contention, studies in which product scarcity (low vs. high) is crossed with need for uniqueness (low vs. high) have typically produced an interaction such that the high-need for uniqueness persons are especially attracted to scarce products (Lynn, 1991). Factors that should further amplify this predicted interaction are explored, along with the implications of this interaction for American society, including a possible cycle in which the consumer may be caught in the continued search for new and special products. The need for uniqueness explanation for the valuation of scarce commodities is compared with other theoretical explanations.
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