Countering Social Information: Low Identity Integration Leads to Nonconformity in Consumption Choices

ABSTRACT We examine how the processing of social information for identity‐driven consumption choices is moderated by individual differences in the psychological management of multiple identities. We specifically show that consumers who experience their multiple identities as more incompatible—or low identity integrators—are less likely to conform to social information. Study 1 found evidence for this effect in a real‐world consumption choice. Study 2 experimentally demonstrated that low identity integrators resisted social, but not technical, information. By manipulating identity integration experimentally, Study 3 found that identity integration directly affected preferences against socially vetted products above and beyond alternative individual difference factors. Suggesting that nonconformity to social information may serve self‐protective motives, Study 4 found correlational evidence that low identity integrators tend to be especially concerned about the preferences of others when making their own consumption choices. Study 5 experimentally showed that low identity integrators tend to resist conforming to others' preferences only for products that signal identity but not for identity‐irrelevant products, further suggesting that low identity integrators may counter social information to protect the self.