Direct and indirect predictors of opposition to immigration in Europe: individual values, cultural values, and symbolic threat

Abstract

The current study examines the following questions: (1) the extent to which individual basic human values are linked with attitudes towards immigration; (2) whether symbolic threat by immigration mediates this relation; and (3) whether cultural values moderate the relations between individual values, threat, and attitudes towards immigration. The empirical analysis relies on the 2014/2015 data from the immigration module of the European Social Survey (ESS) for West and East European countries. We find that universalistic individuals expressed lower threat due to immigration and higher support of immigration while conservative individuals displayed the opposite pattern. Symbolic threat mediated the association between values and immigration attitudes, but in most countries the mediation was partial. The associations between values, symbolic threat, and attitudes towards immigration were stronger in countries characterised by higher levels of intellectual and affective autonomy and weaker in countries characterised by higher levels of cultural embeddedness. The findings provide support for the centrality of human values in the formation of threat and attitudes towards immigration.

Personal Value Preferences, Threat-Benefit Appraisal of Immigrants and Levels of Social Contact: Looking Through the Lens of the Stereotype Content Model

“…Results suggest that individuals, who are motivated by higher levels of anxiety, as manifested in values of conservation and self-enhancement, are more likely to perceive immigrant members as a threat and resist social contact. These results support previous findings (Davidov et al, 2020) and strengthen a synthesis between ITT (Stephan and Stephan, 1996; and values theory (Schwartz, 2006) in which higher levels of anxiety lead to greater perceptions of threat. The positive relationship between self-transcendence and benefits may be explained through previous research showing the relationship between self-transcendence values and the ability to be empathic and sensitive to others (Caprara et al, 2012;Zibenberg and Kupermintz, 2016).…”

“…Theories in the area of social psychology have focused on structural characteristics of groups which inform the cognitions we hold, such as their levels of status and perceived competition (in the Stereotype Content Model, SCM ( Lee and Fiske, 2006 ; Fiske et al, 2007 ; Cuddy et al, 2009 ) or their realistic or symbolic threat (in the case of Integrative Threat theory, ITT ( Stephan and Stephan, 1996 , 2000 ). In addition, extensive research has shown the way in which the personal values that an individual holds can predict the positive or negative attitudes toward immigrants that s/he will hold ( Davidov et al, 2008 , 2020 ; Davidov and Meuleman, 2012 ; Beierlein et al, 2016 ). The current paper aims to extend previous research by combining these bodies of literature to examine the way in which the relationship between personal values and attitudes may be useful in predicting levels of contact that an individual will choose to have with immigrants in his or her society.…”

Italian Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of the Prejudice Against Immigrants Scale (PAIS): Assessment of Validity, Reliability, and Measure Invariance

“…The literature suggests that both individual-level and country-level factors may affect prejudice and negative attitudes toward immigrants ( Davidov et al, 2019 ). At the individual level, studies focusing on the sociodemographic correlates of prejudice against immigrants found that people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged or earn low income are unemployed, less educated, and with high levels of religiosity, as well as those who support political conservatism are more likely to display greater prejudice ( Hello et al, 2002 ; O’Rourke and Sinnott, 2006 ; Carvacho et al, 2013 ; Turoy-Smith et al, 2013 ; Anderson and Ferguson, 2018 ; Piumatti and Russo, 2019 ).…”

Shifting categories, changing attitudes: A boundary work approach in the study of attitudes toward migrants

“…Another popular iteration of this theory is Blalock's (1967) power threat hypothesis: the larger the out‐group, the higher the sense of threat perceived by the in‐group. There exists considerable debate whether the threat must be “real” or simply perceived (Blalock, 1967; Davidov et al., 2019; Quillian, 1995). One of the most significant threat factors is the perceived size of the migrant population.…”