This is a brief overview of the research project I conducted as part of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s SPUR program.
I received a Mamie Phipps Clark Research Grant from Psi Chi to conduct this research.
Abstract
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that by 2040 the population will be more diverse than it has ever been before. Current research in social psychology has found conflicting evidence for how this fact of demographic change is perceived by White individuals and its relationship with anti-immigrant attitudes. Additionally, recent work on demographic change has uncovered different potential mediators that may explain the relationship between demographic change and expressed political preferences (Perkins et al., 2022; Earle & Hodson, 2022), thus painting a more nuanced picture of this phenomenon. Moreover, arguments have recently been made in political psychology asserting that, in order to understand the relationship between perceived threat and political preferences, we need to be more specific about what types of threat are being considered when individuals are forming their political attitudes (Brandt & Bakker, 2022; Brandt et al., 2021). In light of this, the question of what factors might predict (negative) perceptions of immigrants will likely involve a more specific and nuanced consideration of which threats are relevant.
For this project, I was interested in how a specific political-cognitive antecedent known as collective existential threat (CET), defined as the perception and fear that the group one identifies with will cease to exist (Bai & Federico 2020, 2021), might be an especially important predictor for how immigrants are mentally represented amongst non-Hispanic White individuals from the United States. Specifically, I proposed that those with higher levels of CET will have more racialized, and potentially more negative1, mental representations of immigrants. These perceptions are potentially important since prior work has shown that whether immigrants are seen as looking White has implications for how people evaluate the likelihood that immigrants can successfully assimilate into the United States as well as how likely they are to be seen a potential domestic threat (Kunst et al., 2018).
To investigate this, I recruited over 200 non-Hispanic White participants from the U.S. to generate mental representations of ‘Americans’ or ‘immigrants’ using the noise-based reverse correlation procedure (Figure 1 displays the experimental procedure). The purpose of having a separate condition where participants generate representations of ‘Americans’ is to first demonstrate that these two categories diverge in the minds of non-Hispanic White participants, however this project is mainly concerned with evaluating immigrant representations. Generators were also given additional measures of political conservatism2 since I aimed to see if CET influences immigrant representations even when controlling for these variables. As recommended in recent reverse-correlation work, I created classification images (CIs) on the group-level (i.e., experimental condition), individual-level (each participant’s CI), and subgroup-level (by randomly averaging 10-15 individual-level CIs together). I then examine the effects that CET has on immigrant and American mental representations via independent coder trait ratings (N=250) and pixel intensity analyses (focusing only on face pixels).
Highlights
I will highlight a few of the more interesting findings from this project. For simplicity, I will only focus on group-level CIs. As you can see in Figure 2, participants generated vastly different mental representations for immigrants and Americans. Moreover, I conducted a median split on CET scores within the immigrant condition such that I could generate immigrant representations for those with ‘High CET’ and those with ‘Low CET’ (Figure 3). Similarly, Figure 4 shows the mental representations of immigrants for those within the top quartile and bottom quartile of CET scores. Looking at these images it does seem that high CET individuals have more racialized/darker representations of immigrants. Indeed, pixel intensity analyses show that higher CET was associated with objectively darker mental representations. Lastly, multiple regression analyses showed that CET level predicts more non-White mental representations even when controlling for other well-known measures of political conservatism.
Figures
Figure 1
Phase 1: Generate CIs
Phase 2: Rate and Analyze CIs
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Descriptives
Distribution of CET Scores
CET scores between High CET and Low CET - Immigrant Condition Only
Scale Correlation Matrix
- FRS = Measure of Far-Right Support (2 items); higher FRS means greater far right support
- IDEO = Measure of political ideology (1-item slider on an 11-point scale); higher IDEO means greater conservatism
- SDO = Social Dominance Orientation (8 items)
- CET = Collective Existential Threat (13 items)
Linear relationship between CET and Pixel Intensity Scores (within immigrant condition only)
- Higher pixel intensity scores indicate lighter images.
References
Bai, H., & Federico, C. M. (2020). Collective existential threat mediates White population decline’s effect on defensive reactions. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 23(3), 361-377.
Bai, H., & Federico, C. M. (2021). White and minority demographic shifts, intergroup threat, and right-wing extremism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 94, 104114.
Brandt, M. J., & Bakker, B. N. (2022). The complicated but solvable threat–politics relationship. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Brandt, M. J., Turner-Zwinkels, F. M., Karapirinler, B., Van Leeuwen, F., Bender, M., van Osch, Y., & Adams, B. (2021). The association between threat and politics depends on the type of threat, the political domain, and the country. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 47(2), 324-343.
Earle, M., & Hodson, G. (2022). Dealing with declining dominance: White identification and anti-immigrant hostility in the US. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 25(3), 727-745.
Kunst, J. R., Dovidio, J. F., & Dotsch, R. (2018). White look-alikes: Mainstream culture adoption makes immigrants “look” phenotypically white. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(2), 265-282.
Perkins, K. M., Toskos Dils, A., & Flusberg, S. J. (2022). The perceived threat of demographic shifts depends on how you think the economy works. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 25(1), 227-246.