(Im)moral aspects of attitudes towards immigrants: The role of the Dark Tetrad and Moral Foundations

Abstract

Immigration and refugee crisis are only one of the major problems many European countries are currently facing, including the transition countries, such as Serbia. Reactions to refugees and immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa are polarized and raise the issue of moral aspects of attitudes towards them. Lately, human (im)morality has often been investigated through the concepts of the Dark Tetrad traits and Moral Foundations. The aim of this research aim is to investigate the role of the Dark Tetrad traits and Moral Foundations in the understanding of general and specific, situation-related prosocial attitudes towards immigrants. The results of the current study (N=629 respondents from Serbia) have shown that Harm/ Care and Fairness/Reciprocity (Individualizing Foundations) correlated negatively with the Dark Tetrad traits. On the other hand, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect and Purity/Sanctity (Binding Foundations) correlated positively with these traits. The general attitude towards immigrants is mainly explained by moral foundations: the positive effect of Harm/Care and negative effects of Authority/Respect and Purity/Sanctity were detected, with the marginal negative effect of Machiavellianism. The specific attitude towards immigrants is explained both by the Dark Tetrad traits and Moral Foundations. The expected positive effect of Fairness/Reciprocity and negative effects of sadism and Purity/Sanctity were also registered. Moral Foundations mediate the relationships between the Dark Tetrad traits and both the general and specific attitudes towards immigrants. Only narcissism and sadism have direct effects on attitudes towards them. The Binding Foundations amplified, while the Individual Foundations diminished the negative effects of the Dark Tetrad traits on both the general and specific attitudes towards immigrants. These results suggest that when people perceive threats from the "others" to their inner circle, formal boundaries of morality are weakened and even most malicious personality traits are expressed.

The Effect of Moral Foundations on Intergroup Relations: The Salience of Fairness Promotes the Acceptance of Minority Groups

“…The relationship between morality and attitudes towards immigration is supported by our findings in Study 1 and is in line with recent research on MFT in other cultural settings (Federico et al, 2016;Han & Dawson, 2021;Petrović, 2019;Stewart & Morris 2021).…”

“…Finally, testing a moral manipulation in the context of intergroup relations and focusing on a particular group of immigrants instead of immigration in general (i.e., Hadarics & Kende, 2017;Nath et al, 2022). The relationship between morality and attitudes toward immigration is supported by our findings in Study 1 and is in line with recent research on MFT in other cultural settings (Federico et al, 2016;Han & Dawson, 2022;Petrovic´, 2019;Stewart & Morris, 2021).…”

“…interpersonal intentions and intergroup relations (Brambilla et al, 2019;Leach et al, 2015;López-Rodríguez & Zagefka, 2015;Monroe & Plant, 2019;Ray et al, 2021). Polarized attitudes towards immigrants (i.e., solidarity, violence) may reflect different morally relevant motives, both on the individual and intergroup level (Kertzer et al, 2014;Nicol & Rounding, 2017;Petrović, 2019). Individualizing foundations are negatively associated with the perceived threat regarding immigration (Hadarics & Kende, 2017) and positively related to helping intentions towards outgroups in need (Nilsson et al, 2016;Obeid et al, 2017;Smith et al, 2014;Wilhelm et al, 2020), empathic concerns and perspective taking (Hannikainen et al, 2020), greater endorsement of human rights principles (Stolerman & Lagnado, 2020) and collective action intentions in equalityfocused movements (Milesi, 2017).…”

“…Manipulation of moral arguments have been found to reinforce certain political attitudes (Feinberg & Willer, 2012) as well as as environmental attitudes and charitable giving (e.g., Feinberg & Willer, 2013, 2019Feygina et al, 2009;Winterich et al, 2012). Past research on moral foundations has mainly focused on differences between the political spectrum (i.e., liberals and conservatives in the US context).…”