Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Erlangen Centre for Islam & Law in Europe, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany.
Am J Hum Biol. 2021 Jan;33(1):e23435. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.23435. Epub 2020 May 26.
To understand migration from an evolutionary perspective, this phenomenon has so far been mainly investigated in animal species. We therefore aim to investigate the potential evolutionary roots of attitudes toward migrants in humans.
We used data from the European Social Survey (n = 83 734), analyzing attitudes toward migrants by performing ordinal mixed models.
We found that men have a more restrictive attitude toward migration than women, which increases with age and is stronger with a child in the household. Attitude toward migrants is also more skeptical if migrants have a different ethnicity and are from poorer countries. Increasing education and religiousness are associated with a more positive attitude toward migrants, particularly toward migrants of different ethnicity and from poorer countries.
Although migration flows are a hallmark of the human species, previous findings suggest that (pre-)historic migration flows were at times accompanied by conflict and violence, while at the same time, they insured survival by allowing cultural exchange and the avoidance of inbreeding. Accordingly, we assume that contemporary attitudes toward migration are rooted in our evolutionary past. We discuss the respective behavioral patterns from an evolutionary perspective, arguing that both-a negative attitude as well as openness-make sense.
为了从进化的角度理解迁移现象，目前主要在动物物种中对其进行了研究。因此，我们旨在探讨人类对移民态度的潜在进化根源。
我们使用了欧洲社会调查（n=83734）的数据，通过进行有序混合模型分析来研究对移民的态度。
我们发现，男性对移民的态度比女性更为保守，这种态度随着年龄的增长而增强，并且在有孩子的家庭中更为强烈。如果移民来自不同的种族且来自较贫穷的国家，那么对移民的态度也会更加怀疑。受教育程度和宗教信仰的增加与对移民的更积极态度有关，特别是对来自不同种族和较贫穷国家的移民。
尽管移民流动是人类的一个显著特征，但先前的研究结果表明，（史前）移民流动有时伴随着冲突和暴力，同时通过文化交流和避免近亲繁殖来确保生存。因此，我们假设当代对移民的态度根植于我们的进化史。我们从进化的角度讨论了各自的行为模式，认为消极的态度和开放的态度都是有意义的。
