Abstract
Media impact people's beliefs and reflect shared cultural values. One of the most popular TV and online program formats are talent shows, where people present skills from different domains and are assessed by a panel of celebrity judges. This kind of media content is rich in information about the presumed nature of abilities. In the paper, we examine how mindsets—the implicit theories regarding the innate or malleable nature of abilities—are expressed in talent shows in three countries differing in individualism and collectivism: China, Poland, and USA. Through quantitative thematic analysis, we found significant differences across cultures in how often each mindset (fixed, growth, and mixed) was shared by participants, judges, and other people who appeared in the shows. While the growth mindset was most strongly underlined by participants from China and least strongly by those from the USA, the fixed mindset was mainly articulated by judges in the Polish version of the show. We discuss results in the light of collectivism/individualism and modernization theory.
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