Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University.
National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2021 Dec;47(12):1686-1704. doi: 10.1177/0146167220984648. Epub 2021 Feb 1.
Although threat perceptions are commonly used to explain attitudes toward immigrants, the psychological factors underlying threat are surprisingly understudied. Drawing from goal pursuit and self-determination theory, we examined the perceived instrumentality of immigrants as an antecedent of locals' threat and attitudinal perceptions. Through four studies ( = 1,372) with different configurations of local population segments and target immigrant groups, we investigated the impact of immigrants' instrumentality in terms of hindrances to locals' autonomy, belonging, and competence needs. Including hindrances to our proposed model of threats and attitudes led to an improvement in the overall fit with the data, allowed for a better specification of the threats-to-attitudes pathways, and elucidated the complexity and downstream consequences (endorsement of pro-immigration policies) of attitudes. The present findings underscore the utility of goal-driven approaches to studying intergroup conflicts, and implications for understanding and improving locals' attitudes toward immigrants are discussed.
尽管威胁感知常被用来解释人们对移民的态度，但威胁背后的心理因素却出人意料地研究不足。本文借鉴目标追求和自我决定理论，考察了移民被感知到的工具性对当地人威胁和态度感知的影响。通过四项研究（N=1372），采用不同的本地人群细分和目标移民群体配置，我们调查了移民在阻碍当地人自主性、归属感和能力需求方面的工具性。将对我们提出的威胁和态度模型的阻碍纳入其中，提高了数据整体拟合度，更好地规范了威胁到态度的途径，并阐明了态度的复杂性和下游后果（支持移民政策）。本研究结果强调了目标驱动方法在研究群体冲突方面的效用，并讨论了其对理解和改善当地人对移民态度的意义。
