Reducing Negative Attitudes Toward Immigrants in Russia and Taiwan: Possible Beneficial Effects of Naïve Dialecticism and an Incremental Worldview

Abstract

Greater mobility in human societies has resulted in more interactions and contact with immigrants. In the current research, we investigated how viewing the world as flexible, changing, and paradoxical (i.e., naïve dialecticism and an incremental theory) may predict one's authoritarian beliefs and in turn predict one's attitudes toward immigrants. To test the generalizability of our findings, we recruit comparable samples (i.e., college students) from two societies that are largely different (Russia and Taiwan). Great cultural similarities were observed. Naïve dialecticism and an incremental theory appeared as two distinctive constructs. People who were higher on naïve dialecticism and an incremental over entity theory had lower support for authoritarian beliefs (i.e., right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation) and, in turn, had more favorable attitudes toward immigrants. Some cultural differences were also observed. Taiwanese participants' negative attitudes toward immigrants were entirely ideology-based, whereas Russian participants' negative attitudes toward immigrants were partly based on presumably personal experiences. Pan-cultural and culturally specific mechanisms in predicting attitudes toward immigrants were further discussed and explored.

Dialectical thinking as a driver of charitable giving

“…A higher number on the implicit person theory index reflected the dominance of an entity theory and a lower number reflected the dominance of an incremental theory. Consistent with previous studies (Chen et al, 2006; Lee et al, 2020), the dialectical thinking index and the implicit person theory index were not correlated ( r = 0.01).…”

Implicit theories of intelligence, morality, and the world in a sample of Russian perfectionists

“…All materials were presented to participants in Russian. Questionnaires were translated into the official language of the Russian Federation according to the procedure presented in Lee et al (2020).…”

Of Mice and Culture: How Beliefs About Knowing Affect Habits of Thinking

“…In addition to the Mouse Paradigm, participants also completed the Dialectical Self Scale (DSS), a paper-and-pencil measure of naïve dialecticism in the domain of self-perception ( Spencer-Rodgers et al, 2018a , b ). The DSS has been applied to research in various areas including the self ( Spencer-Rodgers et al, 2004 ; Chen et al, 2006 , 2013 ), personality ( Fetvadjiev et al, 2018a , b ; Na et al, 2020 ), emotions ( Sims et al, 2015 ; Hideg and Kleef, 2017 ; Lu et al, 2017b ), intergroup conflicts ( Lu et al, 2017a , 2020 ), resilience capacity ( Zheng et al, 2020 ), attitudes toward social issues ( Hideg and Ferris, 2017 ; Lee et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2020 ), employee performance ( Bai et al, 2015 ), and causal attributions ( Li et al, 2016 ). The original version in English was translated into Japanese via back translation ( Brislin, 1980 ).…”