Parasocial but meaningful: Exposure to foreign culture encourages pro-outsider attitudes

Abstract

This article attempts to investigate how exposure to foreign culture affects individual attitudes toward foreign nations. According to parasocial contact theory, indirect contact with outgroup members on screen reduces outgroup prejudice. Applying it to cultural exposure in interstate relations, I argue that the consumption of foreign-made cultural products (TV programs, movies, animation, etc.) plays a significant role in ameliorating outgroup attitudes. Specifically, exposure to foreign culture strengthens individual-based parasocial relationships with outgroup media characters while deemphasizing group-based categorical differences, which contributes to positive attitudes toward the contacted foreign country. Moreover, mediated cultural exposure, similar to face-to-face intergroup contact, has a secondary transfer effect. Greater exposure makes ingroup members hold favorable opinions of multiple secondary foreign countries and, more broadly, of immigration and globalization. Generalized perceptions of outgroup threats are expected to be a mediator that partially explains the effect transferability of cultural exposure. Analyses of the AsiaBarometer Survey (Study 1) and the East Asian Social Survey (Study 2) lend empirical support to the above arguments. Using cable TV ownership as an instrument, the basic findings are robust to a set of sensitivity tests.