Social influence Flashcards
The behaviour of individuals is based
on their personal characteristics and partly on their group memberships: culture subcultures family reference groups social class
Culture
The broadest component of social behaviour – an entire society.
The collective mental programming of the people in an environment…it encompasses a number of people who were conditioned by the same education and life experience”
Perceives the world through his own cultural lens.
Includes shared beliefs, attitudes, norms, roles and values found among speakers of a particular language who live during the same historical period in a specific geographic region.
Meaning-transfer model
culturally constituted world –> transferred to consumer goods via macro mechanisms such as advertising and fashion system –> meaning is finally transferred to individual consumer through a range of symbolic actions or rituals
Rituals
A type of symbolic activity consisting of a series of steps (multiple
behaviour) occurring in a fixed sequence and repeated over time
Exchange rituals
Possession rituals
Grooming rituals
Divestment rituals
Language & symbols
To acquire a common culture, the members of a society must be able to
communicate with each other through a common language
a symbol is anything that stands for something else
Heroes
Persons dead or alive, real or imaginary, who possess characteristics which are highly prized in culture and who thus serve as models of behavior
Concept can be extended to include reference groups and opinion leaders
Cultural learning
Formal learning – adults and older siblings teach a child „how to behave”
Informal learning – child is imitating behaviour of selected others
Technical learning – teachers instruct the child in an educational environment
what to do
Group levels
- Supranational level
• underlying dimensions of culture that impact multiple cultures or different
societies
• regional character, racial or religious similarities or differences, shared or
different language - National level
• shared core values, customs, personalities and predisposition factors that
tend to capture the essence of a national character of a citizens of particular
country - Group level
• various subdivisions of a country or society
• subcultures, membership and reference groups
National culture
A country or nation-state is a politically unified population that may and often does contain more than one culture or society from anthropological perspective
National culture as a sum
Cultures are formed through the interactions of different personalities
both conflicting and complementary that create a whole that is more than
the sum of its parts
Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map
Traditional values
Secular-rational values
Survival values - place emphasis on economic and physical security
Self-expression - values give high priority to environmental protection,
growing tolerance of foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality, and rising demands for participation in decision-making in economic and political life.
National character
The set of psychosocial characteristics manifested by a given national population.
Based on certain stereotypes of members of other national entities
Archetypes as an expression of culture
Recurring patterns (character types, plot structures, symbols, and themes)
that occur in mythology, religion, and stories across cultures, societies, and
time periods and as such, they personify universal meanings and basic human
experiences and can trigger unconscious responses
Subculture
A distinct cultural group that exists as an identifiable segment within a larger, more complex society.
The influence of a subculture on consumer
behaviour depends on:
Subcultural distinctiveness
Subcultural homogeneity
Subcultural exclusion
