Threat Theory Research Articles

Public attitudes towards co-ethnic migrant integration: evidence from South Korea

ABSTRACT What can public attitudes towards the integration of co-ethnic migrants teach us about social integration in newly diverse societies? Research finds that South Koreans prefer co-ethnic migrants from culturally similar or desirable origins, but it says little about the integration of migrant groups. Existing data and qualitative studies suggest considerable barriers to fully incorporating otherwise preferred migrants. Focusing on integrating North Korean migrants in South Korea – a relatively privileged migrant group that enjoys substantial resettlement support but encounters barriers to full integration – this paper addresses the research gap by testing competing explanations of migrant incorporation. Informed by Intergroup Threat Theory (ITT), the study examines how threats defined as realistic or symbolic shape native attitudes toward these migrants. Using a conjoint survey experiment to measure preferences for economic, political, and social integration, we find South Koreans favor North Korean migrants with extended residence in South Korea, which is a marker for diminishing realistic and symbolic intergroup threats. Conversely, migrants signaling stronger affiliations to North Korea or lacking diverse social ties in South Korea fail to alleviate intergroup threat concerns and consequently face discrimination. Our findings offer insights into integration policy and contribute to the migration and citizenship literature and contemporary Korean Studies.

Whether the China Threat Theory Represents Chinas International Role Analysis Based on the Transformation of Chinese Foreign Policy

In recent years, China has actively adjusted its foreign policy, integrated into the international order with a more open attitude, and strived to play Chinas role in the region and the world and shoulder Chinas responsibilities. However, the United States and some of Chinas neighbors view Chinas rise with suspicion and fear, and vigorously promote the China threat theory. Based on this background, this paper puts forward the research topic of whether the China threat theory represents Chinas international role from the perspective of the transformation of Chinas foreign policy. As a rising power, it is of great significance in the field of international relations to understand whether the purpose of Chinas rise poses a threat to other countries and the current international order. This paper uses the qualitative analysis method to analyze and study the South China Sea dispute and the Diaoyu Island issue as cases, and draws the conclusion that the China threat theory is not Chinas current international role.

Political relations and trade: New evidence from Australia, China, and the United States

AbstractThis article employs structural vector autoregression and local projection methods to examine the impacts of the deterioration in the US–China political relations on bilateral trade between Australia and China. Three scenarios are considered to reflect the evolution of US geopolitical strategies in recent years such as “America First”, “China Threat Theory” and “The Protection of US Allies”. The simulation results illustrate that worsening the US–China political relations has a negative impact on Australian exports to and imports from China. It is also found that economic conditions in the US play a more important role in the transmission of this impact than those in China and Australia. In addition, various options are explored to check the robustness of the findings in this article.

Political context and immigrants' work-related performance errors: Insights from the National Basketball Association.

In numerous countries, both international migration and regional support for far-right political parties are on the rise. This is important considering that a frequent aim of far-right political parties is to aggressively limit the inflow of immigrants. Understanding how regional far-right political support affects the immigrants working in these regions is therefore vital for executives and organizations as a whole. Integrating political science research at the macro-level with stereotype threat theory at the individual level, we argue that regional far-right political support makes negative immigrant stereotypes salient, increasing the number of work-related performance errors conducted by immigrants while reducing those by natives. Using objective field data from a professional sports context, we demonstrate how subordinates' immigrant status interacts with the political context in which they reside to predict their frequency of performance errors.

California Civil Asset Forfeiture and the Policing of Minority Residents

In Who Are the Criminals?, John Hagan argues that legislators use “crisis framing” to influence how the general public thinks about crime. President Ronald Reagan used reports of a drug use epidemic fueled by organized crime as part of his crisis framing. In 1984, he signed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act (CCCA) as part of his “war on drugs.” The CCCA allowed law enforcement to use civil asset forfeiture (CAF) to keep or sell property that it suspected was connected to illegal activity. State legislators followed suit and passed their own CAF laws. Some critics argue that law enforcements’ use of CAF has disproportionately targeted minority populations. We draw on racial threat theory to examine connections between the size of minority populations and the use of CAF in California. Our analysis uses nineteen years of CAF cases filed with the California Attorney General’s Office. Consistent with racial threat theory, we find a positive association between the number of forfeitures in a jurisdiction and a logged measure of the percentage of Black residents, net of crime, and other jurisdiction attributes. Our results support concerns that law enforcement has incorporated CAF as a technique used disproportionately against some minority communities.

Propaganda Kelompok Feminis Melalui Pemanfaatan Media Sosial Instagram

Feminism has the main goal of equalizing the rights of women and men who were previously differentiated based on gender. The massive and comprehensive development of feminist groups through various media, one of which is using Instagram, is a means of spreading propaganda for feminist groups and supporting LGBT groups through feminist groups. In its use, Instagram as a means of propaganda takes advantage of its fast and wide spread so that the propaganda is carried out more effectively. The account @indonesiafeminis as a feminist and LGBT propagandist relies on illustrations, persuasive texts and videos to get the attention of the general public as social media users. This study aims to analyze the threat of propaganda in uploads from Instagram accounts related to LGBT. The theory used is the theory of Modern Propaganda and Threat Theory by analyzing a number of uploads on the account @indonesiafeminis. The result of the research is that the threat analysis shows that the @indonesiafeminis account has intentions and capabilities which are marked by intentions in the form of propaganda in support of LGBT and capabilities in the form of actions taken and social networks that are owned both in the real world and social media. Future researchers should conduct research by comparing several other feminist accounts and then analyze them comprehensively using other threat theories so that the suggestions from their research are also comprehensive.

Robots are coming to town: A visual experiment on urban belonging and anxiety

Robots are becoming increasingly common in urban social environments and this is likely to cause emotional reactions among people. Utilizing theoretical frameworks of social identity approach and integrated threat theory, we investigated a sense of belonging to and perceived anxiety toward an urban environment with robots. We conducted a visual survey experiment using a representative sample of Finnish adults (N = 1226). Results based on multilevel regression analysis showed that, compared to deserted settings or settings with humans, robots in urban spaces decreased a sense of belonging to and increased anxiety toward an urban environment. Participants who were living in less urban areas, older, or neurotic reported a lower sense of belonging. Women and people that were living in less urban areas, young, neurotic, or introverted reported higher perceived anxiety. The results suggest that new technologies like robots in urban spaces can bring forth also feelings of anxiety and disruption for the sense of belonging, at least for some people. Hence, introduction of these technologies should be considered carefully in urban planning. Our study contributes to the theoretical discussions on place identity and examining anxiety as a disruption of the identification process.

Ethnoracist exclusion and anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe: A hybrid model analysis using the European Social Survey, 2002–2016

The literature on anti-immigrant sentiment analyzes generalized threat—rooted in a mix of cultural and economic anxieties—but relies on a theoretical foundation based on the study of race. This is puzzling since research on immigration attitudes has developed theoretical and empirical blind spots regarding the relevance of race-ethnicity. This study engages with race theories to show that racialization and symbolic racism constitute a primary axis along which a substantial subset of the European public views immigrants. Using five waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2016) and matched country-level data, the study finds that excluding immigrants based on race-ethnicity distinguishes a sizeable minority in most countries, and is also not isolated to any one region. Further, results provide evidence for the racialization of certain immigrant groups through greater associations between these groups’ presence and anti-immigrant sentiment. Strong and consistent reactions to the Muslim foreign-born population stand out. Finally, ethnoracist exclusionists are the primary agents of such racialization as they exhibit the strongest reactions to racialized groups, having the highest anti-immigrant sentiment. Findings are discussed within the context of assumptions underlying classical threat theories, the cultural, religious, and racialized aspects of anti-Muslim sentiment, and the global and local manifestations of race.

A Right Restricted: Racial Threat and the Sponsorship of Restrictive Voting Laws

AbstractIn the aftermath of the United States’ 2020 presidential election, state legislatures have introduced and passed an unprecedented number of restrictive voting bills. While past research has looked at the state-level drivers of restrictive voting legislation, this project explores what factors predict which legislators within states push for these laws. Specifically, I ask whether district-level characteristics predict when lawmakers use bill sponsorship to send messages about their positions beyond those sent by simple roll-call votes. I use theories of geographical threat and racial resentment to predict where sponsorship of these bills is most likely. My results tie these theoretical expectations to observed legislative activity: the whitest state legislative districts in the least-white states were the most likely to be represented by lawmakers who sponsored restrictive bills, as were districts with the most racially resentful white residents. I conclude that, despite lawmakers justifying these restrictive laws by claiming that fraud is a major problem, race and racism are inherently tied to the introduction and passage of these bills. This raises important questions about commitments to multiracial democracy.

Group Threat and Social Control: Who, What, Where, and When

Group threat theory has stimulated an impressive number of studies over the course of the past several decades. Our review takes stock of this literature, focusing on core issues of concern to the criminological community. We begin by documenting the theoretical origins of group threat theory and discussing the early research informed by the theory. We then highlight the ways in which criminologists have built on and extended the early research by expanding the theory's scope, clarifying mechanisms, and addressing methodological issues. In our concluding remarks, we direct attention to the more consequential limitations of the work to date and offer suggestions about areas for fruitful growth in the future.

The Threat of Social Network Games in Indonesia

This research examines the potential threat through SNG in Indonesia. The theories of threat, social media, cyber, and network society are used to analyze the research problem through qualitative analysis. Data was obtained through interviews and literature studies. The results of the study show that the potential threat on SNG includes ideological threats in society, growing illegal and pornographic content, theft of personal data, illegal monitoring of user activities, online fraud, cyberbullying, inappropriate content, dependence, and cyber attacks that threaten the activities of social network game users in Indonesia.

Minority Threat in Schools and Differential Security Manifestations: Examining Unequal Control, Surveillance, and Protection

Using a recent nationally representative sample of schools, this test of Minority Threat Theory, which predicts greater use of punitive social controls in places with more people of color, is the first to use an empirically and conceptually based security typology that distinguishes among strategies intended to (1) control, (2) surveil, and (3) protect students at school. This study not only accounts for the way particular security strategies are often bundled, but also for differential objectives that are seemingly dependent on the racial and ethnic context of schools—essential considerations for understanding how minority threat manifests in school security programs. Ultimately, our results demonstrate the need for policymakers to recognize how disparate implementation of school security strategies may exacerbate inequality for youth of color.

Justification of intergroup violence among Israeli Jew: the role of perceived threat

ABSTRACT This article investigated whether perceived threat is related to justifying intergroup violence based on integrated threat theory. Israeli-Jewish participants (n = 236) answered questions on perceived Israeli-Arab threat, frustration leading to aggression, and intergroup violence justification. The findings indicate that there is a significant correlation between perceived realistic threat and intergroup violence justification, whereas no significant correlation was found between frustration leading to aggression and intergroup violence justification. These results suggest the need to better understand intergroup conflicts in the field of international relations.

The Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic Made People Feel Threatened, but Had a Limited Impact on Political Attitudes in the United States.

We investigated if the COVID-19 pandemic's onset caused changes in political attitudes. Influential theories predict that the pandemic's onset will cause people to adopt more conservative attitudes, more culturally conservative attitudes, or more extreme attitudes. We comprehensively tested the external validity of these predictions by estimating the causal effect of the pandemic's onset on 84 political attitudes and eight perceived threats using fine-grained repeated cross-sectional data (Study 1, N = 232,684) and panel data (Study 2, N = 552) collected in the United States. Although the pandemic's onset caused feelings of threat, the onset only caused limited attitude change (six conservative shifts, four extremity shifts, 12 liberal shifts, 62 no change). Prominent theories of threat and politics did not make accurate predictions for this major societal threat. Our results highlight the necessity of testing psychological theories' predictive powers in real-life circumstances.

Generosity during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of collective narcissism

This study analyzes how a novel psychological factor—collective narcissism—affects giving behavior to national and international charities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that collective narcissists tended to keep more resources for themselves or national charities while giving less to international charities. In line with the group threat theory, this tendency is more pronounced in countries with a high share of foreign population. Our findings suggest that the shared experience of the global COVID-19 public health crisis did not blur the boundaries between ingroups and outgroups for collective narcissists. These results imply that mitigating outgroup hostility associated with collective narcissism is critical to strengthening cross-national solidarity during unprecedented crises. However, more contact with foreign nationals might not reduce the negative impact of collective narcissism.

Disease and prejudice: risk attribution to ethno-racial groups over the course of a pandemic

ABSTRACT Past research suggests that disease outbreaks drive prejudice towards minorities as they increase economic and disease threats. Based on an open-ended survey question distributed to 7,902 German residents over the course of one year of the Covid-19 pandemic (April 2020 to April 2021), we investigate the link between life-threatening events and ethno-racial prejudice. We find that pandemic-related threats only drive respondents’ tendency to scapegoat ethno-racial groups if they hold left and center leaning ideologies. However, for far-right supporters who are the most likely to attribute the spread of Covid-19 to ethno-racial groups, pandemic-related threats do not affect that attribution. We further find that threat theories are of limited relevance for explaining which ethno-racial groups are targeted: respondents held Chinese accountable at the beginning of the pandemic but quickly shifted their attention to immigrants – a salient figure in pre-Covid-19 rightist rhetoric. We show that ideology, more than pandemic-induced threat, continues to drive prejudice and demonstrate the under-utilized advantages of using open-ended survey questions for understanding the dynamics of intergroup prejudice.

A POLITICAL EVALUATION OF THE HYDROCARBON TRADE BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN UNION, RUSSIA AND THE USA

The aim of this study is to assess the political, strategic, and economic background of the hydrocarbon crisis that led European Union countries to be dragged into the war between Russia and Ukraine that began at the beginning of 2022. In this study, Stephen Walt's balance of threat theory is used methodologically to analyze the crisis. As a result of the conflict, the European Union countries, through NATO, which was consolidated by the US, have imposed economic sanctions on Russia and have brought themselves into economic difficulties in terms of energy supply. In particular, Germany, which has begun to experience difficulties in energy supply, which it needs for its developed industry, has started to be indirectly economically pressured by the USA. The energy crisis experienced by the European Union countries has two dimensions. The level of threat posed by the economic and political dimensions of this crisis differs.

United in division: explaining attitudes towards Muslims in Canada and Quebec

ABSTRACT This article evaluates the gap in attitudes towards Muslims between Quebec and the rest of Canada (ROC) and compares this gap to the importance of other explanatory variables. To do so, the article provides a comprehensive model that constitutes the most extensive study of attitudes towards Muslims in Canada yet. This model boasts the highest explanatory power found in the recent literature. The article finds that while there is a difference in attitudes between Quebec and the ROC, these differences are modest in comparison to inter-individual differences within each region and have weak explanatory power. Group threat theory, social identity theory, and leader evaluations all show greater explanatory power than the aforementioned Quebec gap. Contact theory has weak explanatory power. None of the variables associated with Quebec nationalism appear to have a statistically significant effect in the analysis focused on Quebec cases either.

An identity threat perspective on why and when employee voice brings abusive supervision.

Drawing from identity threat theory, this study aims to understand how and when employee voice can lead to abusive supervision. It proposes and examines a theoretical model in which employee voice is linked to abusive supervision through the mediating effect of leader identity threat. We conducted a field study by collecting data from 93 supervisors and 533 subordinates in China at two different points in time. A structural equation model and Mplus software were used to examine the direct relationship between employee voice and abusive supervision, as well as the mediating effect of leader identity threat and the moderating effect of supervisor traditionality. Our results showed that employee voice was positively related to leader identity threat and had an indirect effect on abusive supervision via leader identity threat. In addition, we found that supervisor traditionality moderated the relationship between employee voice and leader identity threat. Subordinates' voice increased perceptions of leader identity threat among supervisors with high traditionality, whereas supervisors with low traditionality did not make this association. Finally, the indirect effect of employee voice on abusive supervision via leader identity threat was moderated by supervisor traditionality. First, this study broadens our understanding of the antecedents of abusive supervision by proposing that employee voice may induce abusive supervision. Second, it develops an identity threat perspective to explain why employee voice is positively related to abusive supervision. Finally, it enriches the research on implicit leadership theories by proposing that supervisors' cultural values can also influence supervisors' sense-making of subordinates' behaviors.

Threats, Emotions, and Affective Polarization

Why do some individuals feel hostility and express bias against supporters of other political parties? Drawing on intergroup threat theory, we examine the role of emotions as a mechanism by which perceived threats against the ingroup are a source of increased affective polarization. In two survey experiments performed in the multiparty contexts of Sweden (N = 505) and Germany (N = 776), we manipulated intergroup threat using simulated online media, presenting participants with content related to immigration, and measured affective polarization using ratings of ingroup and outgroup supporter traits and feeling thermometers. Compared to a control condition, the threatening content evoked fear, anxiety, and anger among participants. However, only when individuals reacted to the threatening content with anger was increased affective polarization observed, in line with research showing that anger is a high‐arousal emotion related to an increased reliance on stereotypes. We conclude that individuals distance themselves from supporters of opposing political parties when they perceive a threat to their ingroup and subsequently react with anger. The findings contribute to the literature on affective polarization by stressing the role of emotional reactions to intergroup threat.