The Olympic Effect on American Attitudes towards China: beyond personality, ideology, and media exposure PETER HAYS GRIES, H. MICHAEL CROWSON and TODD SANDEL* This paper explores the impact that increased exposure to China during the two and a half weeks of the Beijing Olympics had on American attitudes towards China. A large N longitudinal survey revealed a significant increase in negative attitudes towards China from the beginning to the end of August 2008. Statistical analysis revealed no dominant explanation for this change, however. Instead, personality (openness), ideology (social dominance orientation and right wing authoritarianism), and media exposure each had a small impact on changing attitudes. Further research (including a follow-up experiment manipulating the valence of media coverage of China) suggested both the possibility of an ‘efficiency effect’, whereby China’s very success in both hosting and competing in the Olympics generated increased American anxiety about China, and a ‘cheating effect’, whereby stories about underage Chinese gymnasts and deception (e.g. lip synching while another child actually sang during the Opening Ceremonies) diffused broadly through social networks, uniformly and negatively impacting American attitudes towards China. During the lavish Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a massive scroll was unfurled across the center of Beijing’s Olympic Stadium. NBC’s Olympic commentators explained that it was blank to symbolize the Chinese people’s desire to wipe clean foreign misconceptions about China. This would allow the Beijing Games to create a new, and presumably better, international impression of China. Indeed, as several performers danced across the scroll, an impressive image of a beautiful Chinese landscape was slowly revealed—with an incongruous smiley sun added at the very end to the top right corner. For the Chinese government, the Beijing Olympics would clearly be a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, they wished to impress the world with the achievements of 30 years of ‘Reform and Opening’. Over US$40 billion was poured *Peter Hays Gries, H. Michael Crowson and Todd Sandel all teach and conduct research at the University of Oklahoma. Gries is the Harold J. & Ruth Newman Chair and Director of the Institute for US – China Issues; Crowson is Associate Professor of Educational Psychology; and Sandel is Associate Professor of Communications. Journal of Contemporary China (2010), 19(64), March, 213–231 ISSN 1067-0564 print/ 1469-9400 online/10/640213–19 q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/10670560903444181 Downloaded By: [Gries, Peter Hays] At: 14:18 2 March 2010