Welcome to The AMHE New York Chapter

 

What's The Fat Content? Whether Or Not You Notice Depends On How You Think

Science Daily — A new paper by Shailendra Pratap Jain (Indiana University), Kalpesh Kaushik Desai (SUNY Binghamton), and Huifang Mao (University of Central Florida) examines how consumers in individualistic- and collectivistic-oriented societies compare products. For example, do consumers in western societies -- generally thought of as more individualistic -- categorize low-fat cookies or sports cars differently than consumers in eastern societies, considered more collectivistic"

In a study forthcoming in the June issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, the authors tested categorization tendencies through a series of experiments. In the first, participants were analyzed for collectivistic or individualistic tendencies before rating similarities among products. In the second and third, participants were manipulated to tend toward collective thinking or individualistic thinking, and the fourth compared undergraduate students originally from North America and East Asia.

The researchers found that individualists are less affected than collectivists by the context within which products are placed. For example, when a low-fat cookie was grouped with cereal bars and rice cakes in the health food section, collectivists paid more attention to fat content than when the low-fat cookie was shelved taxonomically among all types of cookies. In contrast, individualists perceived the fat content uniformly across contexts.

"Collectivists consider context information in their product categorization more than individualists," the authors write. "Individualists ignore the context and focus only on product features."

The authors conclude: "Our findings fill important gaps in both self-construal and categorization research. An implication of the greater category of membership inclusiveness by individualists is that their stereotypes may be more malleable and less resistant to counter-stereotypical information."

Shailendra Pratap Jain, Kalpesh Kaushik Desai, and Huifang Mao, "The Influence of Chronic and Situational Self-Construal on Categorization." Journal of Consumer Research: June 2007.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by University of Chicago Press Journals.

 

 

 

 

  LATEST NEWS

Call for Abstracts New England Science Symposium. The conference center at Harvard Medical
Boston, Massachussetts
Sunday, April 6, 2008

Read more

The Empire State Medical Association condemns the racist statement of Nobel Prize winner DNA authority of Dr. James Watson.  (www.nyesma.org)

Dr. James Watson made an appearance in London to promote his new book and apologized for his remarks, saying he did not mean to characterize Africans as genetically inferior, British media reported.

 

Full COVERAGE



 

Brain Chemistry Linked To Aggressive Personality

Read more

 

New Links In The Cystic Fibrosis Chain Uncover Potential Therapeutics

Read more

 

Blocking Stress Protein Decreases Alzheimer's Peptide In Mice

Read more


What's The Fat Content? Whether Or Not You Notice Depends On How You Think

Read more

 

Haitian Creole-English Bilingual Dictionary
(HCEBD)


Read more

Copyright ©2007 AMHENY.ORG

Designed and Maintained by Frantz Seraphin