The author examined the premise that the pervasive consumer ideology in today's society has implications for the conceptions of self and others. She used structured interviews to assess conceptions of self and other and G. P. Moschis's (1978) questionnaire to measure consumer orientation among 76 U.S. and 62 Finnish college students. The principal hypotheses were (a) that the U.S. students would be more commodified than the Finnish students and (b) that the participants who were high in consumer orientation would be more likely than those lower in consumer orientation to see themselves and others in material terms and also to consider personal characteristics to have market values. The results supported both hypotheses.
By observing the dissonance-arousing capabilities of product selection in two countries (United States and Finland), the authors examine the supposition that the pervasive consumerism in modern society has implications for people's self-conceptions. Participants were 18-to 22-year-old students of both sexes. Subjects were forced to select between two magazines they initially indicated were less desirable. Dissonance was measured by the change in magazine evaluations from pre-to post choice. For the American subjects, postdecisional dissonance was more consistent for image magazines (which contain more consumerism relevant information) than for news magazines. In addition, postdecisional dissonance for the image magazines was greater for the American sample than for the Finnish sample, and it was positively correlated with measures of consumer orientation only for the American sample.
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