Knowledge time, everyone! According to a recent study that examined our attachment, association and connection to certain brand names, insecure people are more likely to avoid certain labels. Yes, that sounds exceedingly simple, but New York Mag breaks it down into even simpler terms for those of you who failed out of remedial Earth Sciences. Everything here revolves around why certain people might downplay their connection to brands that might be viewed as "prestigious."
The study had participants name brands they identified with and rate them according to prestige, identification, distinctiveness and a measurement called ATSCI, which is basically a fancy acronym that "refers to a person's degree of sensitivity to social comparison cues." The higher the ATSCI number, the more sensitive the participant was to social cues. Then, researchers had participants rate how much they preferred one T-shirt to another, comparing "low" prestige tees from Old Navy to "high" prestige ones from Polo. Some had big logos, some had small. While there was little to no correlation between ATSCI level and logo size on the Old Navy shirts, participants with higher ATSCI levels—those who are definitely a bit more self-aware or self-conscious—were more likely to opt for the smaller logo tees.
Basically, the more self-aware you are and the more you pay attention to those around you, the more likely you are to keep your brand allegiance on the DL. It's basically an assimilation exercise to see if you're a fucking sheep. But it also sort of ignores the subset of people who do pay attention to social cues, yet don't really give a fuck, like fuccbois draped up and dripped out in HBA for example.
