Does Vanity Describe Other Cultures? A Cross‐Cultural Examination of the Vanity Scale

Vanity is a psychological construct that describes a person's excessive concern with physical appearance or achievement. A scale, recently developed to measure this construct, has been psychometrically validated using data from U.S. respondents. The goal of this paper is to determine if this scale can be used cross‐culturally. If the scale has cross‐cultural applicability, it can be used as a counseling device to guide and alert individuals to certain tendencies. The scale also can be used to track foreign cultures as they adopt a consumerism ethos more aligned to Western consumer culture. Based on data from 475 young adults in China, India, New Zealand, and the U.S., the scale was found to have similar dimensionality and factor structure, internal consistency, discriminant validity, and metric invariance. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.     

Effects of Consumption Frequency on Believability and Attitudes Toward Alcohol Warning Labels

Alcohol consumption frequency and alcohol warning label type are examined for their influence on label believability, attitude toward the label, and attitude confidence. Findings from a convenience sample of students indicate a differential impact among five warning labels on label believability and label attitudes. As expected, frequent alcohol users find the labels to be significantly less believable and less favorable than occasional/nonusers of alcohol. However, occasional/nonusers of alcohol hold more confident attitudes toward the labels than frequent alcohol users.     

Cross-Cultural Generalizability of a Scale for Profiling Consumers' Decision-Making Styles

Most studies that have developed and validated models and instruments in consumer affairs research have used U.S. samples. As a result, their cross-cultural generalizability remains unknown. This study reports a cross-cultural examination of a scale for profiling consumers' decision-making styles using a New Zealand sample. Examination of the scale's psychometric properties (i.e., dimensionality and reliability) offers general support for the scale's applicability to a different culture. Some differences were detected, however. The paper concludes with a discussion of these differences and the implications of the findings.