Harvard Professor Joseph Nye famously coined the term "soft power," which has been increasingly in vogue in the study of international relations.

Nye defines power as the ability to influence the behavior of others to get desirable outcomes. To achieve this end, one can either use force or coercion. This is hard power, and as Nye sees it, is problematic since force is only effective in the short term, and coercion, such as sanctions, are difficult to enforce. Soft power, instead, allows one to get desirable outcomes by attraction or arousing positive emotions.

Nye's concept of soft power was coined based on a macro-level analysis, which is too institutional. To better understand the framework underlying the mechanisms of soft power, there are psychological dynamics within the concept that need to be unpacked.

The approach to unpack the nuances within the concept rests upon a simple assumption that society is an aggregation of individuals, and therefore individuals matter in the analysis of social science.

From a psychological perspective, individual cognition underpins the framework of social psychology, which makes a huge impact on social and political landscapes.

Through the lens of psychology, national soft power can be perceived as a force that can influence individual emotions, and thus the whole society at an aggregated level. The emotions should be positive and intense, and able to arouse attraction toward holders of the soft power and thus induce the target to move toward them.

At the policy level, a country that can arouse positive emotions of people in other countries can forge a good bilateral relationship or achieve other desirable outcomes. It can be seen as attaining soft power, if put in Nye's jargon.

So what does China possess that could generate positive appeal to people in other countries. In other words, what constitute the sources of China's soft power?

Pandas are definitely one of them. Here is an example. Washington's National Zoo rented two pandas under a $10 million loan agreement with China. Such panda diplomacy has proved to be a quite successful diplomatic tool. It has attracted an enormous number of Americans to pay visits and generated curiosity and favorable impressions of China.

To increase China's highbrow soft power, the Chinese government could initiate more scholarly exchange programs with other countries, set up more Confucius Institutes abroad, and increase government-sponsored and government-involved people-to-people exchange programs.

China could also boost lowbrow soft power through sending popular culture abroad. This approach, however, could be more pervasive as it targets ordinary people, but could be more organic and impossible to predict and very difficult to control.

In either scenario, the successful use of soft power requires patience and tolerance. This is because positive emotions require repeated long-term stimulation, and most effective vehicles for soft power are organic and liable to generate unwanted outcomes.

The article was compiled based on a recent speech by John Newhagen, associate professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn