Research Development

After setting out to find research that supported my point that the majority of Britons have a negative impression of America I found the link below.

www.globescan.com

A global poll which tells you the attitudes countries have towards other countries. The majority of european countries viewed America negatively, but more specifically only 36% of Great Britain expressed a positive attitude towards the United States.

I wanted to understand how Britain had formed this impression so decided to research into the psychology of forming impressions. I contacted several of the psychology staff at Coventry University via email and had several replies saying they were unable to help me as they did not specialise in social psychology. I had a reply from one of the members of staff, who was willing to meet up to discuss the topic, but unfortunately I was unable to set up a meeting before the deadline for this assignment.

However I had managed to gather some first hand research via an email I had sent to a student in their final year of psychology at Northampton University. I have included a quote from her email in my digital presentation.

“By observing the people around them, when someone you admire greatly exposes a particular attitude, you are more likely to develop the same belief.”

Now that I understand we develop impressions by observing people we admire and gain the same belief, I am going to look into what negative impressions of America are being delivered to Britain through the media.

New Proposal for Digital Presentation

Originally I set out to explore celebrity obsession and whether this was an American trend that has impacted British society. But after further research I failed to find anything that suggested celebrity obsession was solely an American trend that has been imposed in the UK. Although the research I had done on this topic had led me to another interesting avenue within the topic of “American Culture in the UK”, which was that the majority of Britons views of America were negative. I discovered this after reading an article from the telegraph titled “British anti-Americanism ‘based on misconceptions'”

I was surprised to find out that a majority of Britons had a negative impression of America as our own culture seems to have become Americanised. So I have decided to explore what has lead us to thinking this way of America and look into the psychology  of what makes people form impressions.

Once I have found this out I believe I can begin to understand what has led Britons to form these views.

American Culture in the UK

As part of our 151 MC module we are to create a digital presentation, the brief lists several topics, which we had to look into and choose just one. My chosen topic is American culture in the UK.

I was instinctively drawn to the topics that most influence my life, but I chose this topic as I think American culture has the strongest impact on my lifestyle compared to the other given topics. American culture has moulded many aspects of my life from the way in which I choose to present myself to my interests. Many of the shops and restaurants I visit are American, so the culture has affected the clothing I wear as well as the food I eat. It is hard to avoid American culture in day to day life because it surrounds us through the media and in the streets, shops such as McDonalds and Starbucks, which seem to appear on every street corner and so many well known American idols constantly appear on our TV screens.

What impact do these American celebrities have on our society? This is an area I would like to explore in my research, people change their lifestyle based on what they see and hear through the media from diets to fashion trends based on this obsession with celebrities. Is this celebrity obsession another cultural impact America has had on our society? There will be many avenues to explore, within this topic of celebrity obsession, such as what effects does it have on peoples lifestyles and looking into whether certain people are more vulnerable to the messages celebrities communicate to their audience through the media.