Connectedness to humanity is more important for attitudes toward immigrants than holistic thinking, cognitive flexibility, and attributional complexity

Abstract

With international migration rates on the rise, it is crucial to understand attitudes toward immigrants (ATI). The present study contributes to this topic by focusing on cognitive and emotional dispositions that are thought to be related to social perception and thus possibly to ATI. Specifically, it aims to test whether factors of holistic thinking (causality, contradictions, change, and attention), cognitive flexibility, attributional complexity, and connectedness to humanity explain ATI. A sample of 600 participants from an online panel completed a survey. Regression analysis revealed that causality and cognitive flexibility were negatively related to ATI, while change, attributional complexity, and connectedness to humanity were positively related to ATI. Overall, the results showed that emotional connectedness to humanity played the most important role, as it was most strongly related to ATI, explaining ATI beyond the cognitive dispositions. Therefore, connectedness to humanity should be taken into account when explaining ATI and possibly attitudes toward outgroups in general.