Does an Individuals Own Culture Affect the Decision-making - Thesis Example

 An individual’s own culture definitely affects his/her judgment and decision making. In the words of Robert Lowie “culture is the sole and exclusive subject matter of ethnology, as consciousness is a subject matter of psychology, life of biology, electricity as a branch of physics” (Lowie, 1917). Society is made up of individuals and culture plays a huge role in defining and predicting an individual’s behavior. Cultural knowledge and its influence on decision making is extremely important for multi-cultural coalitions. There is a useful term in this regard known as the ‘cultural logic’, which is the study of cultural beliefs and the way such beliefs interact with other cultures and how they affect people who are a part of it. This paper looks at the decision making of an individual at consumer level and sees how culture influences his/her decision making. Decision making is a complex process. When an individual comes across a situation where he has to make a decision then according to Bell & Raiffa (1988) “the decision maker confronts an array of states-of-the-world, one of which will ultimately prevail”. People make decisions on daily basis and buying things in the market is something that people have to face regularly. The world is transforming into a global village and businesses from one region are stepping into other territories for growth and partnerships. In such commotion, knowledge about other cultures and their influences on people’s decisions becomes inevitable. Any business stepping into other countries and societies needs to analyze and forecast consumer behavior before making and supplying the product. Consumer behavior is mainly governed by profit and losses but cultural aspects also come into play and they significantly influence the buyer’s decision. That is why companies and corporates put huge investments in studying and forecasting consumer behavior. This activity also gives them the platform to convey their product/service description in an effective way, so that buyer’s decisions would go in their favor. For instance, to communicate effective and useful psychological information, a ‘knowledgeable & creative staff’ is mandatory now. It is crucial to evoke certain behavior patterns in the consumer target (Kerchner, 1999). It is for this significance, this study has been researched in many fields such as political science, anthropological, social psychology and persuasive communication. And various patterns have been identified in which culture influences individual’s decisions. But the most crucial aspect of all these researches in various fields (but on the same subject) is the principle that lies behind the actual influence of culture on people that shapes their judgments and decisions. From various researches, it is evident that culture embeds certain principles (ethics, beliefs and perceptions) in an individual and then his judgments and decisions are based on those implanted values. This is the essence of cultural knowledge. Because of such principles and moral escorts, experts need to study and analyze consumer behavior pattern that cause diverging attributes such as the demand for high quality at a low price (Briley, 2007). People all over the world belong to various cultural backgrounds and their association with their cultures makes them biased in their judgment and decision making. For instance, European Americans are more influenced by the positive attributes of a decision whereas Asians are more concerned with the negative aspects and consequences of a decision. And as a result, they are more active in considering preventive measures about any decision. They tend to be more flexible, moderate and able to postpone decisions to reduce risk factors (Briley, 2007). Cultural influences are not the only factors that contribute to someone’s decision making. Latest researches have shown that situational factors also hold a major part in contributing to the bias on an individual towards decision and judgment. Certain situational factors decide how much cultural influence comes into play when judgment or decision making is in progress. One research on the subject of cultural influences on decision making was conducted in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. This research was conducted to analyze how various factors influence an individual’s decision making process while buying a product (Briley, 2007). This research revealed several factors that are connected with cultural influences on decision making. For instance, consumer behavior is widely influenced by the language that consumers speak. Other than that, it was also observed that when consumers are asked to think carefully about their buying choices, it triggers a preventive behavior which is evident of stronger cultural influence in decision making. This is an example of covertly impressing their cultural identity on consumers. Language of an individual also plays a crucial role in the decision making process. The mother tongue of the individual as well as the language in which the information is being conveyed in a situation can sometimes be the deciding factors between two contrary decisions. For instance, the above mentioned research was conducted in a bilingual place like Hong Kong and it was observed that when product information was conveyed in Chinese language, consumers showed more ‘preventive’ behavior as compared to information delivered in English. The language used for product description and advertisement triggers responses in the brain of the consumer who starts assessing the product from a different perspective – an influence of language. Consumers get influenced by the language and whatever that language reminds them of the culture and the way business work in their cultures. That is why they confirm to what could be the more socially desirable behavior when making a decision (Briley, 2007). Study also showed some different findings compared to the ones stated above. When ‘prevention vs. promotion’ styled advertising study was conducted, it showed how culture influences consumer’s decision making but when the same people were given the time and the opportunity to think carefully about their own decision and behavior, cultural influence disappeared. The results from the study above can be summarized as follows; the experiment involving Hong Kong Chinese and North Americans only showed vivid cultural influence when both groups of people were asked to explain the reason for their decision. Their reasons confirmed the stereotype cultural influence already explained where Hong Kong Chinese, in their selection of products (decision making), demonstrated compromise more than the group of North Americans. The difference in the choices of the two groups is comprehensively explained by the frequency of generating (practicing) those cultural differences. Study showed that Hong Kong Chinese people evaluate proverbs and other’s advice in a more positive fashion when it endorses compromise, as compared to North American people (Simonson, 2000).  In the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) in 2000 (Briley, 2007), Professor Donnel Briley concluded from this research that cultural influence on decision making is not hard wired into cognitive system of an individual, instead, the situational factors are the real drive forces behind those cultural influence on judgment and behavior. These factors bring forth the social norms and specific behavior in mind (Briley, 2007). Another interesting way to compare Japanese people and Westerners was done in an experiment to predict and study decision making mechanics of both cultures. A Japanese group of people were shown a frame with a line in it and later on they were given an empty frame and asked to draw a similar line that they had seen in the frame before. When the same experiment was conducted on Westerners, the results were different in the sense that Japanese performed better on the relative length scale and the other group performed better on the absolute length scale where relative means, relative to the size of the frame and absolute scale refers to the actual or absolute length of the line (Proctor, 2011). Origin of thought processing and cultural influences that govern such systems are of utmost importance to behavior analysts, companies and businesses. Societies and cultures are always influenced by their original ancient civilization. For instance, certain decision making patterns have been observed in Eastern and Western societies and significant differences have been observed in the way people perceive, analyze, judge and act on a situation. Eastern half of the world pays more attention to the context and association of everything whereas Westerners look at objects in their absolute form and context. That is why Westerners are more analytical in their thought processes and consequently, in decision making (Proctor, 2011). An experiment showed that Easterners were shown underwater images and they were observed for their reflection on the whole experience. Eastern people were always associating things and under water creatures with something else whereas same experiment performed on Westerners showed that they were more interested in seeing things as they were appearing and associating them with surroundings. Such thought process has been passed on to later generations in both societies and now, has become a part of the culture (Proctor, 2011). Westerners are more prone to solving problems and analyzing things with ‘no strings attached’ whereas Easterners always look for patterns and designs in things and situations. Easterners would solve a new problem presented to them by associating it with a similar problem that had occurred in the past, and based on that knowledge they would identify the design and solve the problem. That is why brand loyalty is prevalent in Eastern societies as compared to Western (Proctor, 2011). Decision making associated with culture and its influence is not only limited to consumer behavior of people, it plays a major rule in all professions. Leadership skills and decision making in any department is majorly influenced by principles which the culture embeds in an individual. There are various constraints which a culture or norm imposes on a leader (strategic decision maker). And this becomes significant when people get involved in multinational trade with leaders from other countries. These leaders work and make decisions according to their own cultural background; therefore it becomes extremely important to have basic knowledge of other country’s cultural influences in decision making. This way, anticipating and responding to people from other cultures becomes relatively easy. Such a knowledge base comes in handy when strategizing trade relationships with other countries. Even managing human resource comprising of people from various backgrounds becomes smoother and less problematic. Marketing research becomes more productive when cultural logic is incorporated. Marketing and supply chain runs a lot on forecasting, which can only be done when the strategy planners are able to predict other’s behavior or decision making. From the content presented in this paper, it can be safely concluded that an individual’s culture plays an important role in shaping the decisions of an individual. It is human nature to be prone to habits and the way an individual is raised observing business and other daily life operations, consciously and unconsciously, a lot of information starts storing in the brain and decision making process gets heavily influenced by past and cultural influences. Works Cited David E. Bell & Howard Raiffa (1988). Decision making: descriptive, normative, and prescriptive interactions. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Cambridge University Press. 19-20. Donnel A. Briley, Michael W. Morris, and Itamar Simonson. (Feb 2000) "Reasons as Carriers of Culture: Dynamic vs. Dispositional Models of Cultural Influence on Decision Making" Journal of Consumer Research: 157-178. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/briley/1 Kerchner, Capt Philip M., Richard Deckro, and LTC Jack Kloeber. (June1999) “Valuing Psychological Operations.” 67th MORS Symposium, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, Robert Lowie (1917) cited in Adam Kuper (2000). Culture: the anthropologists' account. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press. p. IX-X. Robert W. Proctor, Shimon Y. Nof, Yuehwern Yih (2011). Cultural Factors in Systems Design: Decision Making and Action: CRC Press. 18-19.  Prof. Donnel Briley. (August 2007). The Effects of Culture on Decision Making and Judgment. Available: http://www.ugc.edu.hk/rgc/rgcnews13/west/07.htm. Last accessed 25th Dec 2011 Read More