Americans’ cross-cultural schemata of Iranians: an online survey
Cross Cultural & Strategic Management
ISSN: 2059-5794
Article publication date: 12 September 2017
Issue publication date: 30 January 2018
Abstract
Purpose
For about four decades, Iran and the USA have continued to be two most stubborn enemies and this has drawn much research on this subject. Yet, only a very small fraction of this body of research has been allocated to studying the perceptions that the people of the two countries have of each other. Using a mixed method survey, the purpose of this paper is to explore cross-cultural schemata US American people have of Iranians.
Design/methodology/approach
By way of an e-mail survey, the authors collected 1,752 responses from American citizens across 50 American states. The open ended responses were codified and categorized. Three out of six categories were further sub-categorized.
Findings
The outcomes showed that about 40 percent of Americans had negative cross-cultural schemata of Iranians with the media being the main source of negative cross-cultural schemata. Conversely, personal contact and communication with Iranians proved to be the source of positive cross-cultural schemata toward Iranians. Other results showed that US American exceptionalism and negative attitudes toward Iranians had a direct and positive relationship with having negative cross-cultural schemata of Iranians.
Originality/value
As the authors have explained in this paper, very few scholars have taken up the issue of cross-cultural schemata Iranian and American people have of each other. By doing this and several other works, the authors have tried to create a new research interest in academic circles.
Keywords
Citation
Ameli, S.R. and Shahghasemi, E. (2018), "Americans’ cross-cultural schemata of Iranians: an online survey", Cross Cultural & Strategic Management, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 119-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCSM-10-2016-0176
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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