Abstract

How can pro-American attitudes be measured? What factors influence shifts in these attitudes? Anchored in institutional identity theory, this study constructs a pro-American attitude scale and posits three hypotheses concerning Taiwanese consciousness, the evaluation of interdependent benefits, and political learning to elucidate the shift in pro-American attitudes. Targeting Taiwanese students, this study employs a quasi-experimental design for data collection and linear regression for hypothesis testing. The findings indicate that from February to June 2023, 37.68% of participants demonstrated a decrease in pro-American attitudes, 36.24% demonstrated an increase, and 26.09% remained unchanged. Participants in the political learning experimental group displayed a shift in pro-American attitudes in contrast to the control group. The regression model developed in this study accounted for 25.07% of the variance in the shift in Taiwanese students' pro-American attitudes, and all hypotheses were empirically supported. An increase in Taiwanese consciousness or frequency of political learning corresponds to a decrease in pro-American attitudes. Conversely, an elevated evaluation of Taiwan–America interdependent benefits correlates with an increase in pro-American attitudes. This study demonstrates that political learning can mitigate the enhancing effect of political communication on pro-American attitudes, thus offering a unique contribution to academic and practical fields.