The Influence Of Cultural Threat On The Evaluation Of Culturally Mixed Products:A Moderated Mediated Model

Nowadays,countries are constantly conducting cultural exchanges,making the phenomenon of cultural mixing visible everywhere,and culturally mixed products are the best proof that different cultures contact,interact and mix each other.Faced with the emergence of culturally mixed products,different individuals have different reactions.According to social identity theory,if the culture identified by an individual is threatened by foreign culture,it will have a negative intergroup attitude towards the foreign cultural group,forming a low psychological integration,and then make a negative evaluation on the culturally mixed products containing the foreign cultural symbols.As an index to measure whether a person is like to accept new things and new ideas,openness to experience can buffer the individual’s perception of foreign cultural threats.Highly experiential openers will take foreign culture as a chance to accelerate the integration of new thoughts,and thus are likely to produce integration response.Therefore,this study intends to explore the effect of cultural threat on individuals’ positive evaluation of culturally mixed products by reducing their psychological compatibility level,and the moderating effect of experiential openness.In the first pre-experiment,in order to test the effectiveness of the text material priming participants’ sense of cultural threat,50 subjects were divided into two groups:control group and experimental group.The results showed that the material successfully primed the cultural threat of the subjects.In the second pre-experiment,the images of culturally mixed products needed in the follow-up study were tested.Firstly,51 subjects were selected for product type screening,and 5 pictures of practical/hedonic culturally mixed products were obtained.Another group of 46 participants were recruited to rate the images for representativeness,sacredness,likability and cultural mixing.The results showed that four neutral images of culturally mixed products with cultural representativeness and non-sanctity were selected successfully.Study 1: The relationship between perceived cultural threat and evaluation of culturally mixed products was investigated.In a single-factor inter-subject design,124 subjects were divided into the cultural threat group and the control group to complete a specific reading task.Then,each subject was asked to view pictures of culturally mixed products and evaluate the products in the pictures.The results showed that cultural threat was negatively correlated with the evaluation of culturally mixed products.In the second study,in order to explore the influence mechanism of cultural threat on the evaluation of culturally mixed products,psychological compatibility was added.In this study,190 subjects were selected and a social distance scale was added to measure their psychological compatibility.The results showed that perceived cultural threat significantly negatively predicted psychological compatibility,and psychological compatibility partially mediated the relationship between perceived cultural threat and evaluation of culturally mixed products.In study 3,in order to explore the moderating effect of openness to experience on the mediating model,a 2（cultural threat: experimental group vs.control group）x2（openness to experience: high vs.low）experiment design was adopted.A total of 201 subjects were divided into the high and low experiential openness groups by the experiential openness scale.The street distance projection test was used to measure implicit psychological compatibility of participants to prove the moderating effect of experiential openness on perceived cultural threat and psychological compatibility/culturally mixed product evaluation.The results showed that high experiential openness buffered the negative effects of cultural threat on psychological compatibility and culturally mixed product evaluation.Conclusion: Psychological compatibility plays a mediating role in the evaluation of cultural threat and culturally mixed product evaluation,and openness to experience plays a moderating role in the first half of the mediation model and the direct path.