Journal of Social Psychology
Volume 143, Issue 5, 2003, Pages 633-648

Perceived intergroup threat and attitudes of host community members toward immigrant acculturation (Article)

Florack A.* , Piontkowski U. , Rohmann A. , Balzer T. , Perzig S.
  • a Psychologisches Institut IV Universität Münster, Germany
  • b Psychologisches Institut IV Universität Münster, Germany
  • c Psychologisches Institut IV Universität Münster, Germany
  • d Psychologisches Institut IV Universität Münster, Germany
  • e Psychologisches Institut IV Universität Münster, Germany

Abstract

The authors expected the extent to which host community members (a) perceive immigrants as threatening, (b) believe that the immigrants are able to assimilate to the host community (permeability), and (c) consider their presence in the host community as legitimate to predict attitudes towards immigrant acculturation. The authors designed Study 1 to examine attitudes of Germans toward Turkish immigrants. Participants were 227 German white-collar and blue-collar workers. As expected, ethnocentric acculturation attitudes positively correlated with perceived threat and negatively correlated with perceived legitimacy and perceived permeability. However, only perceived threat contributed uniquely to the prediction of the attitudes. In Study 2, the authors applied an experimental manipulation of perceived threat. Before answering attitude questions, participants read magazine articles with a threatening, enriching, or irrelevant content. The manipulation had the predicted impact on the self-reported attitudes toward immigrants. However, the salience of threatening or enriching aspects of the Turkish culture did not affect implicitly measured attitudes. © 2003 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Author Keywords

Acculturation attitudes Prejudice threat

Index Keywords

cultural anthropology perception social psychology Interpersonal Relations human middle aged human relation Humans attitude male Acculturation female cultural factor Article adult Social Environment migration Prejudice Emigration and Immigration Social Perception Culture
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-0642272944&doi=10.1080%2f00224540309598468&partnerID=40&md5=2d54923bc375a9b367eb90f197703563
DOI: 10.1080/00224540309598468
ISSN: 00224545
Cited by: 54
Original Language: English