Disentangling Societal Discontent and Intergroup Threat: Explaining Actions Towards Refugees and Towards the State

Abstract

In debates about migration in Western countries, citizens' concerns about immigrant groups often go hand in hand with concerns about the decline of society as a whole. Societal discontent, however, is a distinct concept and may have its own relations with immigration attitudes, over and above the role of perceived immigrant threat. In a survey of a representative sample of Dutch people (N = 1239), we disentangled societal discontent from intergroup threat with respect to their relationship with different kinds of action intentions regarding refugees (both pro and anti) and intentions regarding the government. Unsurprisingly, societal discontent predicted support for anti-government protest (which was strikingly high). More importantly, societal discontent independently predicted both pro-refugee and anti-refugee action intentions, over and above intergroup threat. These associations were moderated by intergroup threat: only when refugees were experienced as a threat did discontent predict anti-refugee action intentions. On the other hand, societal discontent predicted more pro-refugee action intentions, but only when people experienced refugees as an enrichment. Thus, despite populist rhetoric, societal discontent is not always tied to anti-immigrant actions. This suggests that refugee sentiments and societal discontent are not exchangeable: societal discontent plays an important role in reactions to immigration.

Using machine learning to identify important predictors of COVID-19 infection prevention behaviors during the early phase of the pandemic

“…Personal psychological factors A third set of individual-level predictors thematically pertained to personal and psychological resources, and all had positive linear relationships with the outcome variable: a problem-focused coping style (ranked 9 th ), having high hopes that the COVID-19 situation would soon improve (ranked 11 th ), and a temporal focus ll OPEN ACCESS Article on the present (ranked 16 th ) and/or the future (ranked 17 th ). Consistent with theories of health behavior, 25 the perceived personal consequences of COVID-19 infection ranked 10 th . Relatedly, self-reported knowledge about COVID-19-important for risk-assessment-ranked 28th.…”

“…[47][48][49] The social attitudes and norms domain included generic conspiracy beliefs and paranoia, 26,50 immigrant attitudes, 51-53 norm perceptions and preferences (adapted 54 ), and societal discontent and disempowerment. 25,55 Virus-relevant personal concerns included perceived norms (both descriptive and injunctive, adapted 56 ), virus-relevant beliefs and perceived knowledge, virus exposure risk and economic risk, and severity of virus and economic consequences (adapted 56,57 ), trust in governmental pandemic communication and response (adapted 54,58,59 ), and attitudes toward pro-social responses and extraordinary societal responses. 58 This list is not exhaustive; see Table S3 for a full list and item details and our OSF page for a full list of references for each item (OSF: https://mfr.de-1.osf.io/render?url=https://osf.…”

Impact of National Pandemic Lockdowns on Perceived Threat of Immigrants: A Natural Quasi-Experiment Across 23 Countries

“…A range of theoretically tangential covariates were assessed in the PsyCorona survey, including age group, gender, and education level, and subjective disease threat (individual-level perceived COVID-19 infection risk). To explore frustration-related processes, we assessed individual-level perceived disempowerment in society (3 items, e.g., ''Not a lot is done for people like me in this country''; Gootjes et al, 2021;Leander et al, 2019Leander et al, , 2020, and individual-level personal concerns about the coronavirus thwarting one's life plans and daily routines (2 ad hoc items). Full details of the above items, along with a list of other exploratory covariates, are reported in Supplementary Table 2.…”

Conspiracy Theories about Infectious Diseases: An Introduction

“…Future studies may therefore examine the interplay between belief in conspiracy theories and people's attitudes toward in-groups. For example, research could examine the link between conspiracy beliefs and societal discontent (Gootjes et al, 2021), as well as political trust (the degree of belief that one's political system is fair and free from corruption). Furthermore, research could examine how political discourse within a country may influence the endorsement of different types of conspiracy narratives.…”