Explaining immigrant threat perceptions and pro‐immigrant collective action intentions through issue‐specific moral conviction and general need for closure: The case of the US–Mexico border wall

Abstract

This research aimed at explaining immigrant threat perceptions and pro-immigrant collective action intentions through moral conviction regarding the construction of the US-Mexico border wall and general need for closure (NFC). Among independent samples of Democrats and Republicans, we found that NFC (measured in Study 1, manipulated in Study 2) was negatively related to pro-immigrant collective action intentions through enhanced immigrant threat perceptions when moral conviction was low.Instead, when moral conviction was high, Democrats were more motivated to act collectively to support immigrants through reduced immigrant threat perceptions, independent of NFC, whereas Republicans were less motivated to act collectively to support immigrants through enhanced immigrant threat perceptions, independent of NFC.These results suggest that moral conviction offers a powerful moral and issue-specific motivation that can psychologically buffer against the negative influences of general NFC. We discuss how these results complement and advance the literature and open up new research avenues.

Populist ideology, ideological attitudes, and anti-immigration attitudes as an integrated system of beliefs

“…In the present study, PRW voting emerged animated by the same basic motivations and, importantly, by none of the dimensions considered as the content of populist ideology. Moreover, classical right-wing voters are known to manifest prejudicial attitudes towards minority groups such as immigrants [e.g., 65 , 66 ]. Consistently, in the network model, PRW voters resulted indirectly close to the adoption of anti-immigrant stances.…”

A measure of positive and negative perception of migration: Development and psychometric properties of the Positive and Negative Perception of Immigrants Scale (PANPIS)

“…We also took into account the Need for Cognitive Closure (NCC), another relevant factor supporting ethnic prejudice, which is framed as a motivational drive to avoid ambiguity through quick judgments formulation and crystallized information, of which prejudice represents a vivid instance (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). Research on the association between prejudice and NCC showed that immigration may represent a threat to the established shared social reality and, therefore, a potential source of an intolerable uncertainty (De Cristofaro et al., 2019, 2022; Kruglanski et al., 2006; Roets et al., 2015). Thus, we expected to find a negative association of NCC with positive attitudes towards immigrants and a positive association with negative attitudes towards immigrants.…”

“…Thus, we expected to find a negative association of NCC with positive attitudes towards immigrants and a positive association with negative attitudes towards immigrants. Finally, given the well‐known positive associations of conservative political orientations with negative stance in matter of immigration (e.g., De Cristofaro et al., 2022; Federico et al., 2014), we also assessed the potential relationship between the positive and negative dimensions of attitudes towards immigrants (i.e., PANPIS) and political orientation. We hypothesized positive relationships between a negative perception of immigrants and conservative social and economic political orientations and negative relationships of these measures with a positive perception of immigrants.…”

“…Finally, we looked at the correlation between political orientation and positive and negative perception of immigrants. We expected to find that a less conservative political orientations would be positively correlated with positive perception of immigrants and negative correlated with negative perception of immigrants (e.g., De Cristofaro et al., 2022). Additionally, we expected that empathy towards immigrants—the ability to appreciate and provide adequate responses to immigrants’ social suffering (e.g., Coll et al., 2017)—would be positively related to a positive perception of immigrants, whereas negatively related to a negative perception of immigrants.…”