A Window Into the Other Side of the World

The recent triumph of video-on-demand platforms has reshaped global media access, enabling audiences to easily engage with content from diverse cultures. Inspired by this development, we aimed to identify the psychological and contextual factors that drive viewers’ interest in culturally distant media offerings. In a within-subjects experiment, 167 adult participants with a Western background rated their interest in fictitious films that represented either high or low cultural distance. Complementing this implicit selection task, participants reported their explicit interest in culturally distant media, as well as several potential predictors. Results showed that openness to experience, peer influence, cultural intelligence, and learning motivation significantly predicted viewers’ preference for media from distant cultures. These findings highlight the role of individual differences in shaping media engagement in an increasingly cross-cultural media landscape.