Social Psychology
Volume 47, Issue 2, 2016, Pages 74-86

"It's their responsibility, not ours": Stereotypes about competence and causal attributions for immigrants' academic underperformance (Article)

Froehlich L.* , Martiny S.E. , Deaux K. , Mok S.Y.
  • a University of Hagen, Germany
  • b UiT, Arctic University of Norway, Norway
  • c New York University, United States
  • d TUM School of Education, Technische Universität München, Germany

Abstract

In many countries, there is a gap in academic performance between native-born students and students with certain immigrant backgrounds. Based on ultimate attribution error theory, we examined the stereotypes and causal attributions that German student teachers use to account for immigrants' underperformance. By including both Turkish-origin and Italian-origin migrants, we assessed whether these judgments are group-specific. A pilot study (N = 70) showed that Turkish-origin migrants were viewed more negatively than either Germans or Italian-origin migrants. Studies 1 (N = 65) and 2 (N = 54) showed that negative stereotypes moderated judgments of internal responsibility for both immigrant groups. Study 2 also showed that negative stereotypes moderated external attributions for the underperformance of Turkish-origin, but not Italian-origin, migrants. © 2015 Hogrefe Publishing.

Author Keywords

Ultimate attribution error stereotypes Turkish-origin migrants Academic underperformance Italian-origin migrants

Index Keywords

responsibility German (citizen) teacher major clinical study immigrant causal attribution pilot study stereotypy decision making theoretical model student human
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84971012461&doi=10.1027%2f1864-9335%2fa000260&partnerID=40&md5=727959a29dd14cda71781b378e2b77d0
DOI: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000260
ISSN: 18649335
Cited by: 18
Original Language: English