Appalachian State University

We argue that conflict over immigration largely concerns who bears the burden of cultural transaction costs, which we define as the costs associated with overcoming cultural barriers (e.g., language) to social exchange. Our framework suggests that the ability of native-born citizens to push cultural transaction costs onto immi-grant out-groups serves as an important expression of social dominance. In two novel studies, we demonstrate that social dominance motives condition emotional responses to encountering cultural transaction costs, shape engagement in cultural accommodation behavior toward immigrants, and affect immigration attitudes and policy preferences. KEY WORDS: immigration, transaction costs, social dominance orientation, cultural threat If politics is about who gets what, when, and how (Lasswell, 1936), then the cultural politics of immigration can be characterized by conflict over who culturally accommodates whom, when, and by how much. At its most basic level, immigration engenders intercultural contact, where actors from distinct cultural groups are forced to interact with one another. One inescapable reality of such intergroup contact is that one or both parties must expend resources to overcome differences in culture and language to facilitate effective interaction, communication, and exchange. We argue that one important dimension of political conflict over immigration concerns whether it is immigrants o