Intervening in Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: The Causal Effects of Factual Information on Attitudes toward Immigration

2021 ◽  
Vol 697 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-191
Author(s):  
Maria Abascal ◽  
Tiffany J. Huang ◽  
Van C. Tran
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Social Cognitions ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Contrast Information ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigration

If preferences on immigration policy respond to facts, widespread misinformation poses an obstacle to consensus. Does factual information about immigration indeed affect policy preferences? Are beliefs about immigration’s societal impact the mechanism through which factual information affects support for increased immigration? To address these questions, we conducted an original survey experiment, in which we presented a nationally representative sample of 2,049 Americans living in the United States with facts about immigrants’ English acquisition and immigrants’ impact on crime, jobs, and taxes—four domains with common misperceptions. Three of these factual domains (immigration’s impact on crime, jobs, and taxes) raise overall support for increased immigration. These facts also affect beliefs that are directly relevant to that information. Moreover, those beliefs mediate the effect of factual information on support for increased immigration. By contrast, information about English acquisition affects neither policy preferences nor beliefs about immigration’s impact. Facts can leverage social cognitions to change policy preferences.

Who Gets to Have a DREAM? Examining Public Support for Immigration Reform

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 527-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey P. R. Wallace ◽  
Sophia Jordán Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
College Education ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Mass Attitudes ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigration

This article assesses how different notions of citizenship shape mass attitudes toward immigration reform. We examine the underpinnings of the military service and college education provisions that were at the center of the 2010 DREAM Act, which sought to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrant youth in the United States. Employing a survey experiment on a nationally representative US sample, we unpack the extent to which the mass public is willing to support immigration reform based on criteria tied to undocumented immigrants’ educational attainment or enlistment in the armed forces. While education has little effect on its own, military service significantly increases public support for a pathway to citizenship. The positive effect of military service endures when it is paired with less popular provisions, suggesting that a military criterion can serve as a basis of support for broader immigration legislation. Moreover, the effects are strongest for those groups who are traditionally viewed as being most opposed to immigration reforms that expand access to citizenship. The results of this study have implications for public attitudes toward immigration, the persistence of the citizen-soldier ideal, and the importance of framing in the policy-making process.

Could Positive Information Shift National-Level Beliefs?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Guisinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Trade Policy ◽  
National Level ◽  
Random Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Trade Protection ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
First Case ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Types Of Information

Chapter 8 asks whether changing the types of information provided to voters would sufficiently move public opinion to make such a strategy viable for political actors. Three original survey experiments explore the role of positive factual information, partisan factual information, and simple altruistic framing in shaping opinions. In the first case, a randomly selected half of respondents watched a trade supportive political campaign ad narrated by John McCain. In the second case, respondents received positive messages from experts about the benefits for the United States of the World Trade Organization and the costs to the United States of responding to Chinese currency manipulation, but the partisan attribution of the expert cited in these messages varied. In the final case, respondents identified in random order their preference for U.S. trade policy and their preference for Chinese trade policy. Although all three affected individuals’ beliefs, those effects were not strong enough to overcome most participants’ support for trade protection. Positive messages also increased, rather than decreased, gender and race gaps in preferences for trade protection. The chapter concludes by arguing that these findings support the decision of most individuals seeking reelection not to embrace pro-trade messages.

Weighing Lives in War: How National Identity Influences American Public Opinion about Foreign Civilian and Compatriot Fatalities

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-43
Author(s):  
Scott D Sagan ◽  
Benjamin A Valentino
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Military Operation ◽  
International Context ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Collateral Harm ◽  
Do So

Abstract This article explores how the American public weighs tradeoffs between foreign and compatriot fatalities during war. This focus provides an important window into the meaning and significance of citizenship and national identity and, in turn, the most fateful consequences of inclusion and exclusion in the international context. To examine these attitudes, we conducted an original survey experiment asking subjects to consider a fictional US military operation in Afghanistan. We find that: (1) Americans are significantly more willing to accept the collateral deaths of foreign civilians as compared to American civilians in operations aiming to destroy important military targets; (2) Americans are less willing to risk the lives of American soldiers to minimize collateral harm to foreign civilians as compared to American civilians; (3) Americans who express relatively more favorable views of the United States compared to other nations are more willing to accept foreign collateral deaths in US military operations; and (4) Americans are more willing to accept Afghan civilian collateral deaths than those of citizens from a neutral state, such as India. Many Americans recognize that placing a much higher value on compatriot lives over foreign lives is morally problematic, but choose to do so anyway.

Migrants, Caravans, and the Impact of News Photos on Immigration Attitudes

2021 ◽  
pp. 194016122110084
Author(s):  
Guadalupe Madrigal ◽  
Stuart Soroka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Group Treatment ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
News Story ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Web Based ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Large Groups ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigration

The migrant caravan is comprised of thousands of people traveling from Central America to the Mexico–U.S. border seeking refuge from their home countries. In news coverage, images of the caravan regularly portray large groups of immigrants walking toward the border. What are the consequences of this depiction on attitudes toward immigration? We suggest that images of groups of immigrants, in contrast with images of individual immigrants, will tend to decrease support for immigration. In 2019, we preregistered and ran a web-based survey experiment in the United States in which respondents read a news story with either an image of immigrants in a crowd setting, an image of an individual immigrant, or a control condition. The group treatment produces no systematic increase in anti-immigrant sentiment relative to the control. However, we do find differences in the group and individual treatments for respondents who are high in threat sensitivity. Findings are discussed as they relate to recent work on the roles of both fear and person positivity in attitudes about immigration, as well as the potential importance of editorial choices in the portrayal of immigration to the United States.

Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons

2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
DARYL G. PRESS ◽  
SCOTT D. SAGAN ◽  
BENJAMIN A. VALENTINO
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
The Public ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Willingness To Use ◽  
Do So

How strong are normative prohibitions on state behavior? We examine this question by analyzing anti-nuclear norms, sometimes called the “nuclear taboo,” using an original survey experiment to evaluate American attitudes regarding nuclear use. We find that the public has only a weak aversion to using nuclear weapons and that this aversion has few characteristics of an “unthinkable” behavior or taboo. Instead, public attitudes about whether to use nuclear weapons are driven largely by consequentialist considerations of military utility. Americans’ willingness to use nuclear weapons increases dramatically when nuclear weapons provide advantages over conventional weapons in destroying critical targets. Americans who oppose the use of nuclear weapons seem to do so primarily for fear of setting a negative precedent that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons by other states against the United States or its allies in the future.

scholarly journals Race, crime, and emotions

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 205316801879533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camille D. Burge ◽  
Gbemende Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Original Survey

Experimental research on racial attitudes examines how Whites’ stereotypes of Black Americans shape their attitudes about the death penalty, violent crime, and other punitive measures. Marginally discussed in the race-to-crime literature are Blacks’ perceptions of retribution and justice. We fill this void by using an original survey experiment of 900 Black Americans to examine how exposure to intra- and- intergroup violent crime shapes their policy attitudes and emotional reactions to crime. We find that Black Americans are more likely to support increased prison sentences for violent crimes when the perpetrator is White and the victim is Black, and reduced sentences for “Black-on-Black” crime. Our analyses further reveal that Black people express higher levels of anger when the victim is Black and the perpetrator is White; levels of shame and anger also increase in instances of Black-on-Black crime. Given current race relations in the United States, we conclude by speculating about how these emotional reactions might shape one’s willingness to participate in the political arena.

Making National Identity Salient: Impact on Attitudes toward Immigration and Multiculturalism

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Breton
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Central Place ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Canadian Identity ◽  
The Us ◽  
Immigration Attitudes ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigration ◽  
Answering Questions

AbstractDoes national identity necessarily have exclusionary effects when it comes to immigration attitudes or is it possible that some national identities act as inclusive forces? While research in Europe and in the US points to the former, one of the long-standing explanations for Canada's success with immigration has been the central place played by immigration and multiculturalism in its national identity. Using the Canadian case, this research tests the possibility that some national identities might represent an inclusive force. It does so through a nationally representative survey experiment (N = 1500) where respondents' national identity was primed before answering questions on immigration and multiculturalism. The analysis shows that contrary to previous results obtained in the Netherlands, priming Canadian identity does not increase anti-immigration attitudes. A new prime designed to isolate the effect of national identity even decreased these exclusionary attitudes.

scholarly journals Exposure to COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Is as Impactful as Vaccine Misinformation in Inducing a Decline in Vaccination Intentions in New Zealand: Results from Pre-Post Between-Groups Randomized Block Experiment

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jagadish Thaker ◽  
Arun Subramanian
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
The Self ◽  
Vaccine Hesitancy ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
Vaccine Acceptance ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Block Experiment

While recent studies have investigated how health messages on vaccine characteristics shift public intentions to get a COVID-19 vaccine, a few studies investigate the impact of real-world, widely shared vaccine misinformation on COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Moreover, there is currently no research that investigates how exposure to hesitancy, as compared to misinformation, is associated with COVID-19 vaccination intentions. Based on data from a nationally representative survey experiment conducted in March 2021 (N = 1,083), exposure to outright COVID-19 vaccine misinformation as well as exposure to vaccine hesitancy induces a decline in COVID-19 vaccination intentions to protect self and to get the vaccine to protect others in New Zealand, compared to factual information from government authorities. Moreover, there is no significant difference in exposure to misinformation or hesitancy in the self-reported change in COVID-19 vaccination intentions. However, respondents are more likely to believe in vaccine hesitancy information and share such information with family and followers compared to misinformation. Implications for research in health communication campaigns on COVID-19 are presented.

scholarly journals Threat Type, Personality & Policy Preferences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Nugent
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Real World ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Treatment Groups ◽  
Physical Infrastructure ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Identity Threats ◽  
Nationally Representative

A robust literature in political psychology finds that exposure to threat increases support for illiberal policies through the activation of authoritarian and system-justifying personality traits. However, these studies tend to analyze different threats in isolation or utilize bundled real-world threats in ways that complicate scholars’ ability to compare the size of effects across different types or to make causal claims. This paper presents the design and results of a survey experiment designed to isolate specific kinds of threat through four treatment groups priming economic, physical, infrastructure, and identity threats (with a pure control group). The experiment was embedded in a survey of a nationally representative sample of Egyptian adults in December 2018. Results demonstrate that different kinds of threats have different effects on policy preferences. Respondents assigned to the economic treatment were significantly more supportive of illiberal policies, while those in the security treatment were not, and those in infrastructure and identity treatments showed mixed results. In addition, the results show that different threats interact differently with underlying personality traits. In sum, my findings strongly suggest that all threats do not exert the same influence over policy preferences, and that researchers must disaggregate threat into specific components to fully understand its relationship with policy preferences.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document