Hollywood in China: How American Popular Culture Shapes Chinese Views of the “Beautiful Imperialist” – An Experimental Analysis

Abstract

While most mainland Chinese today have extremely few direct contacts with either America or Americans, their indirect contacts with both, via globalized American popular culture, are increasing rapidly. Do daily parasocial contacts with American celebrities shape Chinese views of America? Based on two experimental studies, this paper argues that even indirect, subconscious exposure to American celebrities via popular magazine covers shapes Chinese views of America. However, the impact of that exposure depends upon both the specific nature of the bicultural exposure and the psychological predispositions of the Chinese involved. Not all Chinese are alike, and their personality differences shape whether they experience American popular culture as enriching or threatening, leading to integrative and exclusionary reactions, respectively.

Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences of Investing Self‐Worth in the Ingroup’s Image

“…Chinese collective narcissists disliked Chinese illustrated magazines portraying American celebrities. This was interpreted as their rejection of the American cultural intrusion into the “true” Chinese identity (Gries, Sanders, Stroup, & Cai, ). Thus, collective narcissism seems to be linked to a narrow and divisive definition of social identity, in which those who are “true” members of the ingroup are differentiated from those who are less worthy or “the worst sorts” (as those who oppose it are frequently called by the members of the current Polish populist government; The Economist , April 21, ).…”

Cutting the forest down to save your face: Narcissistic national identification predicts support for anti-conservation policies

“…For example, collective narcissism increases in response to low personal control or perceived long-term in-group disadvantage (Marchlewska, Cichocka, Panayiotou, Castellanos, & Batayneh, 2018). At the same time, collective narcissism fosters intergroup perceptions of threat and expectations of intergroup harm, resulting in intergroup hostility (Golec de Zavala & Cichocka, 2012; Golec de Zavala, Cichocka, & Iskra-Golec, 2013;Gries, Sanders, Stroup, & Cai, 2015). Collective narcissism also predicts suspicion of out-group members.…”

The Relationship between the Brexit Vote and Individual Predictors of Prejudice: Collective Narcissism, Right Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation

“…Collective narcissism is related to direct and indirect retaliatory hostility in response to real or imagined offenses to the ingroup (Golec de Zavala et al, 2013a , 2016 ). Collective narcissistic prejudice and rejection of outgroups is driven by a belief that the targeted outgroups threatened the ingroup's safety (Golec de Zavala et al, 2009 ; Golec de Zavala and Cichocka, 2012 ) or its narrowly defined “purity” (Gries et al, 2008 ).…”

“…There are other reasons to expect that collective narcissists may perceive immigrants as threatening. First, immigrants' foreign values and customs may undermine the “purity” of British identity (Gries et al, 2008 ). In addition, misunderstandings that are frequent in interactions between nationals of different countries may seem particularly aggravating to collective narcissists.…”