Stereotypes and National Identity: Experiencing the “Emotional Brazilian”

Consumer Reactions to CSR: A Brazilian Perspective

“…Similarly, our research is the first to empirically implicate consumers' feelings of personal satisfaction as a key driver of their reactions to CSR. Again, this finding makes sense in our focal cultural context given that Brazilians not only place high importance on values such as benevolence and philanthropy (Tamayo, 2007;Tamayo and Schwartz, 1993) but are also emotionally driven (Rezende, 2008). However, the importance of this construct as a mediator of the reactions of other consumer groups across the globe awaits much-needed confirmation.…”

“…Second, it appears that the reactions of Brazilian consumers to a company's CSR actions are also driven by their feelings of personal satisfaction from supporting a socially responsible company, and the role of these feelings is much stronger for higher income consumers. This is both noteworthy and sensible given that Brazilians are known for being both benevolent (Tamayo, 2007;Tamayo and Schwartz, 1993) and more emotionally driven than, for instance, Europeans and North Americans (Rezende, 2008).…”

“…This is underscored by recent research on the motivational values of Brazilians, which ranks ''benevolence'' (i.e., caring for the well-being of relatives and close friends) and ''philanthropy'' (i.e., caring for the well-being of society as a whole) as tied in second place among the ten different values evaluated, scoring behind only the most important value of ''self-determination'' (Tamayo, 2007;Tamayo and Schwartz, 1993). In addition, Brazilians are known to be emotionally driven (Rezende, 2008). In other words, Brazilians appear not only to place high importance on practices that benefit others but also to be driven by their emotions, and therefore, their reactions to CSR are likely to be mediated by the feelings of personal satisfaction such practices engender.…”

The Role of Emotion Discourse and Pathic Stigma in the Delegitimization of Consumer Practices

“…Actors can use emotion discourse to create and mobilize specific emotional prototypes, which allows them to differentiate between social groups based on their allegedly distinct emotional characteristics. For example, binary gender categories have traditionally relied on discourses depicting ideals of hyper-emotional womanhood versus hypoemotional manhood (Heesacker et al 1999;Plant, Hyde, Keltner and Devine 2000), and the construction of national stereotypes involves emotional prototypes, such as the emotional Brazilian (Rezende 2008). It is in this sense that emotion discourse operates as a mechanism for, inter alia, the creation of "emotional roles" (Parkinson 1996), "emotional stereotyping" (Mackie, Devos, and Smith 2000;Mackie, Smith, and Rey 2008), or even "emotional self-stereotyping" (Menges and Kilduff 2015).…”

“…Whilst the extant work has centered on the relation between stigma and moral meanings (Sandikci and Ger 2009), we draw attention to the fundamental role of emotion discourse in the process of stigmatization. Particularly, our work contributes by explicating how a variety of negative emotional dispositions, feelings or levels of emotional competence are selectively invoked and ascribedvia emotion discourseto portray the villains as morally deviant or inferior (Hopkins, Zeedyk, and Raitt 2005;Lutz 1996;Rezende 2008). These critical arguments highlight the need for consumer researchers to adopt a more reflexive stance towards emotion-based accounts of marketplace controversies, remaining vigilant to the ways in which the actors' emotional rhetoric might contribute to stigmatizing their adversaries and foster the appearance of uncivil, bigoted and intolerant behavior towards them.…”