Abstract
Research finds that the perception that immigrants are culturally and economically threatening is associated with negative attitudes toward immigration. In a largely separate body of work, psychophysiological predispositions toward threat sensitivity are connected to a range of political attitudes, including immigration. This article draws together these two literatures, using a lab experiment to explore psychophysiological threat sensitivity and immigration attitudes in the United States. Respondents with higher threat sensitivity, as measured by skin conductance responses to threatening images, tend to be less supportive of immigration. This finding builds on our understanding of the sources of anti-immigrant attitudes.
Highlights
Research finds that the perception that immigrants are culturally and economically threatening is associated with negative attitudes toward immigration
We add to these literatures by experimentally investigating the relationship between physiological threat sensitivity and immigration attitudes, drawing together research on physiological threat sensitivity as it relates to political ideology and research that emphasizes the importance of perceived threat to anti-immigrant attitudes
When substituting political ideology for party identification, both ideology (β = 0.38, SE = 0.08, η2 = 0.27) and threat sensitivity (β = 0.22, SE = 0.11, η2 = 0.05) significantly predict anti-immigrant attitudes. We infer from these findings that part of the effect of physiological threat sensitivity may be captured by partisanship, but not by ideology
Summary
Research finds that the perception that immigrants are culturally and economically threatening is associated with negative attitudes toward immigration. Respondents with higher threat sensitivity, as measured by skin conductance responses to threatening images, tend to be less supportive of immigration. This finding builds on our understanding of the sources of anti-immigrant attitudes. Relatively little work thoroughly investigates the relationship between threat sensitivity and domain-specific political attitudes, such as those related to immigration. We add to these literatures by experimentally investigating the relationship between physiological threat sensitivity and immigration attitudes, drawing together research on physiological threat sensitivity as it relates to political ideology and research that emphasizes the importance of perceived threat to anti-immigrant attitudes. Our study confirms the expectation that higher physiological threat sensitivity is associated with stronger anti-immigrant attitudes
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