The United States is often regarded as a critical partner and a powerful rival of China, in the minds of many mainland Chinese citizens. The sentiments of both American-favoritism and anti-Americanism can be commonly spotted in public spaces. This study concentrated on examining mainland Chinese's long-lasting ambivalent attitudes toward the United States, a foreign country that they frequently make comparison with their own.

By integrating literatures on media effects and intergroup studies, a research framework was proposed, underlining the antecedent roles of media reception on outgroup attitudes. Based on previous content analyses of media coverage in mainland China, this study first proposed an operational strategy of capturing the elements embedded in media coverage received by Chinese audiences on the United States. Received media tones on foreign and nonforeign policy issues of the United States were treated as the predictors of audiences' cognitive, affective and behavioral components of attitudes toward the foreign country.

Grounded on the theories of the stereotype content model (SCM) and the behaviors of intergroup affect and stereotype (BIAS) map, the attitudes toward an outgroup country consist of judgment of stereotypes (the cognitive component), intergroup emotions (the affective component), and behavioral tendencies (the behavioral component). This study posited that (1) media reception is the antecedent of stereotypes (warmth and competence); (2) media reception and stereotypes are predictors of intergroup emotions (admiration, pity, envy, and contempt); and (3) media reception, stereotypes, and intergroup emotions are the precursors of behavioral tendencies (active facilitation, active harm, passive facilitation, and passive harm). Both direct and indirect effects of the above predictors were taken into account when establishing the current framework. This study emphasizes that the contents of each attitude component can be traced to those of prior components. In these chains, media reception contained the original elements of attitude formation.

A self-reported survey was conducted, and undergraduate students were recruited using a random sampling strategy in Guangzhou, mainland China. Among the participants, 881 questionnaires were collected (response rate: 70.48%). Standardized five-point scales were used in the questionnaire to assess the proposed variables, and confirmatory factor analyses were employed to verify the dimensionality of the constructs.

The findings of this research revealed the important roles of media reception on outgroup attitudes. First, received media tones on two different issues were tightly related to stereotypes, implying that reception of media portrayals successfully activates Chinese's cognitive understanding toward the United States. Second, media reception mainly maintained indirect influences on Chinese's emotions toward the country. Stereotypes were effective mediators in the media--emotion relationships. Third, media reception also held strong predictive effects on four types of behavioral tendencies. More importantly, media reception maintained indirect effects on behavioral tendencies through stereotypes and intergroup emotions.

Although the predictive effects of stereotypes and emotions on behavioral tendencies were not fully supported as proposed, this study still sheds light on how stereotypes and emotions influence behavioral intentions. Stereotypes not only acted as the predictors of emotions and behavioral tendencies, but also worked as the mediators of media reception, carrying media effects to emotions and behavioral tendencies. Similarly, emotions mediated the effects from media reception and stereotypes to behavioral tendencies.

In conclusion, this study underlines that the effects of media reception can reach individuals' behavioral component of attitudes, through activating the corresponding cognitive and affective responses. This research contributes to group-based media effect studies by providing a framework that systematically clarifies the relationships among media reception, stereotypes, intergroup emotions, and behavioral tendencies. This study also offered timely empirical evidence to reveal the current media environment and ongoing public sentiments toward the United States in mainland Chinese society. Finally, the limitations and directions for future studies are also discussed in this dissertation.