The Effect of Categorization Mindset on Consumers’ Social Decisions: An Extended Abstract

Abstract

As every individual is part of a social system, the decisions we make may influence not only ourselves but also others. The focus of this paper is to examine how consumers with different categorization mindsets make social decision, which refers to a choice between self-oriented options (maximization of self-interests) and other-oriented options (seeking benefits of others at some expense to self-interests). Categorization mindsets can be unidimensional, where consumers process only the salient dimensions when making decisions, or multidimensional, where consumers process both salient and non-salient dimensions when making decisions (Ulkumen et al. 2010). While past research has focused on relational factors that determine one’s social motive and subsequently one’s social decisions (Loewenstein et al. 1989; Van Lange and Kuhlman 1994; Messick and McClintock 1968), this paper identifies a non-relational factor of categorization mindset that may impact one’s social decision.