continued: "The World in the Screen: The Impact of Character Representativeness, Society Variability, and Presentation on Audiences' Conceptualization of Cross-cultural Media Images" by Alice Hall
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Impacts of Representativeness on Real-world Perceptions There were two characters evaluated in the US film, a young woman named Beth and a young man named Nick. On an index that ranges from one to seven, the overall mean of the representativeness evaluations for Beth is 4.07(SD=1.19), whereas the average for Nick is 4.10(SD=1.12).

According the pretests, the attributes that viewers associated with Beth are polite, unambitious, self-controlled, unconfident, practical, quiet, serious, and shy. Using OLS regression with listwise deletion, I sought to determine whether the perceived representativeness of this character would be significantly associated with the degree to which these eight attributes were applied to the audiences' evaluations of young US women. There were no significant associations. There were not any significant associations between representativeness and the degree to which the attributes were used to describe the "average person" in the US. I tried controlling for how much the participant reported liking the character, their evaluations of the "goodness" of the character, and their level of identification with the character. These analyses did not reveal any significant associations.

The attributes that were associated with Nick at the .01 level were impolite, modern, unambitious, impulsive, confident, idealistic, and individualistic. I sought to see whether the perceived representativeness of this character would be significantly associated with the degree to which these seven characteristics were applied to the audiences' evaluations of young US men. The only significant association is that the representativeness of Nick negatively predicted the degree to which young US men were seen as individualistic, B= -.397(.20), p=05. This effect is in the direction opposite that predicted. I also sought associations between the perceived representativeness of this character and the "average person" in the US. There were no significant associations. Controlling for liking the character, evaluations of the goodness of the character, and identification with the character did not reveal any significant associations between representativeness and evaluations of the character's subgroups.

Two characters in the Taiwanese film segment were evaluated. Each was a young woman. One was called Jia-Chien and the other Jia-Ning. The mean of the representativeness index is 4.88(SD=1.03) for Jia-Chien and 4.22(SD=1.25) for Jia-Ning. According to the pretests, the attributes associated with Jia-Chien are impolite, modern, ambitious, confident, individualistic, and serious. Using OLS regression, I checked to see whether the representativeness of this character was associated with greater perceptions that people within her subgroups would carry these attributes. None of the associations between representativeness and evaluations of the character's subgroups are significant.

The traits associated with Jia-Ning are polite, ambitious, talkative, and happy-go-lucky, and friendly. I checked to see if the representativeness of this character predicted evaluations of her subgroup within the film setting society. There was only one significant result. The representativeness of the character of Jia-Ning is positively associated with the evaluations of the friendliness of young Taiwanese women, B=.333(SD=.15), p=.03. Friendliness is an attribute that was strongly associated with the character in the pretests, but which was not strongly associated with perceptions of her subgroup of Taiwanese society. The attribute is not stereotypical. Furthermore, this character was most liked, mean=5.39(SD=1.35) and the most identified with, mean=4.05(SD=1.71) of the four characters studied. The fact that this attribute, in relation to this character, represents the only significant result suggests some interesting avenues for investigating the circumstances under which media may have a positive, counter-stereotypical effect on audiences' perceptions of other countries. However, given the number of tests that this analysis represents, the confidence one can have in it is limited.

I also sought to determine whether the perceived representativeness of either of these characters was associated with evaluations of the "average person" in Taiwan. I controlled for liking the characters, the perceived goodness of the characters, and identification with the characters. These analyses did not reveal any further associations between representativeness and evaluations of the characters' subgroups. This analysis provides little support for the prediction that character representativeness would be associated with the degree to which the characters' attributes are applied to their real-world groups.

Discussion
The results hint at situations in which media representations may shape audiences' real-world perceptions. Specifically, one character impacted perceptions of her society when the society was socially distant from the audience, the audience connected with and liked the character, and the character's attributes were different from the prevailing society stereotype. Future research may benefit from investigations into the way cross-cultural media identification is established. These connections may be a means through which media representations could produce positive change on audiences' perceptions of their societies.

However, all things considered, the results of this study are sparse. Its most valuable lessons come as warnings and guides of future research in this area. There are several possible reasons why this study failed to support the hypotheses it examined. The audiences' perceptions of the film societies may have been too well established to be affected by these brief film segments. When one examines the failure to find any differences across the experimental and control groups, the most obvious explanation is that the priming materials did not successfully activate the category structure of society membership. When one considers the failure to find an association between attribution and the application of the characters' attributes to the character's subgroups, it may be that the traits revealed by the characters' behavior were not captured in the measures of the characters' effect on the participants' real-world understandings. For example, if a participant felt that a character's action revealed his or her insensitivity, but the character's impact on the audiences' perceptions of the real-world group's insensitivity was not measured, the study would have failed to capture an aspect of the representation's effect. It is also possible, of course, the hypotheses simply incorrect. The literature from which the study questions were adapted was based on interpersonal contexts. The way individuals process information about the media may be different from the way they process interpersonal information in ways that I did not anticipate. TBS

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