Exclusionary Beliefs, Multicultural Ideology, Empathy, and Perceived Threat: A Comprehensive Model of Anti-immigrant Prejudice

Despite the increased movement of people across national borders, anti-immigrant sentiment continues to pose challenges to immigrant mental health and disrupt intergroup relations. In the USA, where over 14% of the population is comprised of foreign-born individuals, immigrants continue to face prejudice from both the public and political administration. Intergroup Threat Theory (ITT) explains this prejudice as stemming from the perception that the out-group poses a threat to the cultural purity, economic stability, or physical safety of the in-group. Traits that promote group exclusion, such as perceived group superiority (i.e. Right-Wing Authoritarianism; RWA, Social Dominance Orientation; SDO, cultural dominance; CD) and strict, essentialist group boundaries (i.e. Nationalism), were explored alongside worldviews that promote inclusion, such as multicultural ideology (MCI), cultural openness (CO), general empathy, and multicultural empathy in the context of perceived threat and as they predicted anti-immigrant prejudice. Exclusionary Beliefs (i.e. RWA, SDO, CD, NATL) and Inclusionary Beliefs (i.e. MCI, CO, empathy, multicultural empathy) were independently related to perceived threat and anti-immigrant prejudice. Exclusionary Beliefs were predictive of greater anti-immigrant prejudice through the lens of perceived threat; participants who endorsed greater Exclusionary Beliefs were more likely to endorse anti-immigrant sentiment, which partially stemmed from perceived threat. Inclusionary Beliefs were predictive of greater anti-immigrant prejudice through the lens of perceived threat; participants who endorsed greater Inclusionary Beliefs were less likely to endorse anti-immigrant sentiment, which partially stemmed from lower levels of perceived threat. Despite the significant relations between exclusionary traits and prejudices and inclusionary traits and prejudice, the overall model failed to reach significance, suggesting that additional research is needed to understand the relation between Exclusionary Beliefs, Inclusionary Beliefs, perceived threat, and anti-immigrant prejudice