Social contact and attitudes toward outsiders: The case of Japan

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that people oppose refugee resettlement more strongly after being exposed to frames that depict refugees as threatening. However, all people may not perceive such threats the same way. Based on contact theory, we hypothesize that the treatment effects of threatening frames on people’s opposition to refugee resettlement are conditional on their contact experience with foreign-national residents. The results of our pre-registered experiment in Japan indicate that exposure to threatening information does not change attitudes toward refugee resettlement among those living in municipalities where the number of foreign-national residents is rapidly increasing. Combined with the analyses of other subjective measures of contact with foreigners, some suggestive patterns emerge that natives with conscious and positive interactions with outgroup members may be unaffected by anti-refugee rhetoric and threatening frames.

Intercultural Opportunities to Evoke Empathy toward Minority Citizens: Online Contact with Chinese International Students at a Japanese Women’s University

“…As for the youth, an international comparative survey revealed that the percentage of Japanese youth who thought "the citizens of their own country are equipped with cross-cultural understanding and readiness needed to fulfill their role as members of the global community" was the smallest among seven countries (France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Sweden, the UK, and the U.S.) [31]. The increasing number of out-group members, such as foreign residents and tourists, is insufficient to change Japanese people's attitudes toward them; conscious and positive interactions are essential [32]. Thus, intercultural education is necessary to encourage a change in Japanese attitudes [26,30].…”