The Influence of Social Desirability Pressures on Expressed Immigration Attitudes*

Abstract

Objective. Immigration scholars have found that the highly educated and political liberals are considerably less likely to support restrictionist immigration policies than other groups. I ask whether the influence of social desirability pressures in the survey interview is responsible for this finding. Methods. An unobtrusive questioning technique known as the list experiment is used to measure Americans' support for immigration restrictionism. The list experiment can easily be embedded in a standard telephone survey and has been used by previous investigators to study racial attitudes. Results. Restrictionist sentiments are found to be more widespread among the U.S. populace than previous studies have estimated, especially among college graduates and political liberals. Conclusion. My findings have implications for immigration scholars and social scientists who study other sensitive attitudes and behaviors. The most commonly employed strategies to reduce socially desirable responding may not be enough.

Concerns about the Euro and happiness in Germany during times of crisis

“…The standard example in this context is when people have to answer whether they are concerned about immigration (Janus 2010), which also has been discussed as a Faced with the expectation of sensitivity-based measurement phenomena, the availability of different survey modes provides an excellent opportunity to examine the importance of the political interpretation of the results. As relevance of the argument of a stigma-laden political attitude increases, the distinction between the two major survey modes is expected to make a stronger difference.…”

The Effects of 9/11 on Attitudes Toward Immigration and the Moderating Role of Education

“…Studying such distorting effects on expressions of immigration attitudes in survey interviews, e.g. Janus (2010) finds that college graduates are more likely than respondents with a lower educational level to conceal anti-immigration views when asked directly . Stocké (2007) shows that better educated respondents of the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) perceive stronger social desirability incentives when answering racial attitude questions than the less educated.…”

Need for support or economic competition? Implicit associations with immigrants during the 2015 migrant crisis

“…Moreover, Eurosceptics and those disillusioned with democracy in general have been found to support far-right parties, which often centre their policies around antiimmigrant beliefs (Billet and De Witte, 1995;Escandell, 2010, 2008;Citrin and Sides, 2008;Coenders and Scheepers, 2003;Janus, 2010;Sides and Citrin, 2007;Tajfel and Turner, 1986).…”

“…As direct measures of public opinion towards migrants may be biased by social desirability pressures, that is, respondents' tendency to present themselves as open, liberal, and good citizens (Abronson et al, 1998;Cook and Selltiz, 1964;Janus, 2010;Khan and Ecklund, 2012;Krumpal, 2012;Quillian, 1995;Velasco Gonzalez et al, 2008), our dependent variable is citizens' implicit associations with immigrants. We propose capturing citizens' implicit associations with migrants to circumvent the social desirability problem.…”