Together in Good Times and Bad? How Economic Triggers Condition the Effects of Intergroup Threat

Together in Good Times and Bad? HowEconomic Triggers Condition theEffects of Intergroup Threat∗

Alexandra Filindra, University of Illinois at Chicago

Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz, University of Rhode Island

Objectives. Research has suggested that geosocial exposure to out-groups is associatedwith heightened threat perceptions on the part of the dominant white majority.However, findings are not consistent. Methods. Drawing on realistic group conflicttheory and research in political science that privileges the role of the economiccontext, we test if the effects of geosocial exposure are conditioned on individualexpectations about the health of the macroeconomy using a unique data set fromthe New England states. Results. We show that a perceived increase in the presenceof immigrants in the community positively correlates with restrictionist immigrationpolicy preferences (in this case support for Arizona’s anti-immigration law), but onlywhen people are pessimistic about the future of the state’s economy. Conclusion.The information provided by the social context becomes relevant for people’s policypreference formation only when they experience or expect material loss.

For decades, social science has associated local demographics with politics.In political science, Key (1949) asserted that the “real problem” in southernpolitics is “the maintenance of control by a white majority” at a time of shift-ing demographics. In this view, the size of the African-American populationdetermined the level of threat posed to the dominance of whites. Accordingto Key, the level of racism, discrimination, and repression in southern states“var[ies] roughly with the Negro proportion of the population” (Key, 1949:5).In psychology, realistic group conflict theory (RGCT) focuses on competitionover material resources as the root cause of intergroup conflict and prejudice(Blalock, 1967; Sherif, 1966; Bobo, 1983; Huddy and Sears, 1995; Snider-man and Tetlock, 1986; Giles and Evans, 1985; Giles and Buckner, 1993;Blumer, 1958). This theoretical tradition has stressed that incompatibility ofgoals, scarcity of means, and challenges to group status—whether real (Sherif,1966) or subjective (Bobo, 1983)—can induce intergroup hostility.

∗Direct correspondence to Dr. Alexandra Filindra 〈[email protected]〉. Dr. Filindra will shareall data and coding for replication purposes. The authors would like to thank the followingpeople for their comments and suggestions: Todd Makse, Bob Stein, Steven Corey, MarionOrr, the participants at the 2012 State Politics and Policy Conference, our two anonymousreviewers, and the editors of Social Science Quarterly. The data for this project were collectedwith a grant from the Rhode Island Foundation and the generous support of the TaubmanCenter for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University.

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 94, Number 5, December 2013C© 2013 by the Southwestern Social Science AssociationDOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12028

Together in Good Times and Bad 1329

Although much of the research on intergroup conflict has focused on therelationship between African Americans and whites, a number of studies havealso looked at the relationship between whites and immigrants both in theUnited States and in Europe and specifically how group size can affect attitudestoward immigrants (Dixon and Rosenbaum, 2004; Dixon, 2006; Tolbert andHero, 1996; Berg, 2009; Quillian, 1995; Aksoy, 2011; Brader, Valentino,and Suhay, 2008; McLaren, 2003; Rocha and Espino, 2009; Zarate et al.,2004). Although the correlation between group size and prejudicial policypreferences appears strong, there are several studies that find no correlationor even a negative correlation (Aksoy, 2011; Sides and Citrin, 2007; Hoodand Morris, 1997, 2000, 1998). More recent theories of threat have soughtto combine and measure several dimensions of threat, including material,symbolic, and identity threat (Stephan et al., 2002, 2005; Stephan, Renfro,and Davis, 2008). Although this approach provides a more multidimensionalaccount of how threat is expressed, it does not take into account contextualtriggers.

Other research points to macroeconomic instability as a key component forout-group hostility (Citrin et al., 1997; Burns and Gimpel, 2000). Researchhas shown that attitudes toward immigrants are not constant over time (Simonand Alexander, 1993; Gimpel and Edwards, 1998), a finding that suggeststhat changes in the broader socioeconomic context may influence attitudestoward out-groups. Extant research suggests that fluctuations in prejudicialattitudes may be associated with the vicissitudes of the economy (Citrin et al.,1997; Burns and Gimpel, 2000). With few exceptions (e.g., Quillian, 1995),scholars have focused on the geosocial and the economic context as alternativeexplanations for restrictive policy preferences.

We argue that to understand immigration policy preferences among whiteswe must take into account the interrelationship of the geosocial and themacroeconomic context. The effects of intergroup interactions are conditionalupon the material macrocontext within which these interactions take place(Quillian, 1995). Individuals interpret their situation in relation to out-groupsas a zero-sum gain only when the external economic environment makes themfeel economically vulnerable and their local demographic context provides aready out-group to scapegoat. We argue, therefore, that when people areoptimistic about the economy, exposure to out-groups should have no effecton restrictive or nativist policies aimed at ethnic minorities. However, whenconfidence in the economy is in decline, greater exposure to out-groups shouldproduce prejudicial attitudes and restrictive policy preferences.

We test this theory using a new survey consisting of 1,180 residents inthree New England states (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut).Specifically, we test if a perceived increase in the presence of immigrantslocally is correlated with increased support for restrictive and punitive stateimmigration policies and if the correlation is conditioned by perceptionsabout the future of the state’s economy, and we find evidence in favor of ourhypotheses.

1330 Social Science Quarterly

The Threat Hypothesis and Realistic Group Conflict Theory

A large number of studies in political science and sociology have asso-ciated intergroup proximity with intensified conflict, especially when thedemographic and political dynamics within a community are in flux (Key,1949). The “group threat” hypothesis stipulates that the larger the minoritycommunity the more the majority white community will feel politically andeconomically threatened (Giles, 1977; Giles and Evans, 1985). A number ofsubsequent studies have associated group proximity and group size with racialhostility (Fossett and Kiecolt, 1989; Frisbie and Neidert, 1977; Giles andBuckner, 1993); however, most have assumed away the psychological sourceof this lack of comity and the causal mechanisms that produce it (but seeQuillian, 1995). RGCT grounds the conflict hypothesis in intergroup com-petition over material resources (Campbell, 1965; Sherif et al., 1961; Bobo,1983; Bobo and Kluegel, 1993; Bobo and Hutchings, 1996; Blumer, 1958;Blalock, 1967). According to RGCT, competition over material resources re-sults in a zero-sum game because gains made by one group are viewed as aloss by others. Sidanius and Pratto (1999:17) have argued that this dynamic“translate[s] into perceptions of group threat, which in turn causes prejudice.”Experiments show that competition over material resources can lead to inter-group hostility even when the groups have minimal cohesion or no commonidentity (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). A game that is structured in zero-sum termsand a lack of coincidence in goals is all that is required to produce intergroupconflict (Sherif, 1966; Sherif et al., 1961). In early work on RGCT, Bobo(1983) argued that whites viewed busing in zero-sum terms, as a policy thattook away resources and threatened privileges. Subsequent work has shownthat not only actual but also perceived threats to a group’s material well-beingcan elicit negative responses toward the out-group and support for policiesthat disadvantage out-groups (Baughn and Yaprak, 1996; Green and Cowden,1992; Kaiser and Wilkins, 2010).

Although RGCT does bring the material dimension into the study of grouprelations, the assumption of a constant zero-sum game makes it difficult tounderstand why tolerance does emerge and why some times and places tendto be more tolerant than others. RGCT makes it especially difficult to ex-plain recent contradictory findings associated with immigration (Hood andMorris, 1997, 1998, 2000; Berg, 2009). For example, while Huddy andSears (1995) find that living in a heavily Latino area is associated with in-creased opposition to bilingual education, Hood and Morris (1997) find thatamong whites, the level of support for more immigration was positively asso-ciated with the size of the Hispanic population. In a separate study (2000),they find that Anglo support for California’s Proposition 187, which limitedservices for undocumented immigrants, waned as the Hispanic populationin a neighborhood increased. Similar inconsistencies are evident in interna-tional studies (e.g., Sides and Citrin, 2007; Meuleman, Davidov, and Billiet,2009).


Many of the studies on intergroup threat have developed in response totheories of intergroup contact, which suggest that intergroup interactions areassociated with tolerance (e.g, Allport, 1954; Pettigrew et al., 2011; Wagneret al., 2008) so they have rarely problematized the effects of the broader con-text (including the economy) on attitudes toward out-groups. In contrast tocontact theory, intergroup threat theories posit that an increasingly large pres-ence of minorities is associated with heightened threat that majority groupsexhibit toward out-groups. Yet this dichotomy is inconsistent with Allport’s(1954) initial formulation of the social contact theory, which posited thatthe emergence of positive intergroup attitudes is conditional upon a numberof factors. Key among these factors, parity between groups was a necessaryprecondition for contact to produce positive effects. Equally important inAllport’s and subsequent discussions of contact theory is interpersonal con-tact between members of out-groups and the majority, not just geospatialexposure.

While it is possible that a group’s presence in the community can lead topositive contact, it is by no means a given that this will happen (Stein, Post,and Allison, 2000). Indeed, the threat hypothesis as originally stipulated byKey (1949) drew exclusively from his observations of the southern UnitedStates where there was a large presence of African Americans but almost nomeaningful or positive contact between whites and blacks. For the purposesof this study, we are interested in the presence of immigrants in the geospatialenvironment, so we focus on “threat” effects although we do not dismiss thatthis geospatial exposure could result in positive intergroup interactions (e.g.,Oliver and Wong, 2003).

Economic Conditions and Social Prejudice

A separate strain of research has focused on contextual economic conditionsas a key motivation for social prejudice and nativist preferences. In this view, itis not so much group interaction or the proximity to out-groups that producesprejudice; rather, prejudice comes as a response to economic vulnerabilityregardless of where one lives or around whom she lives. The underlyingidea is consistent with RGCT in that it privileges material interests, but thethreat is measured in terms of the objective macroeconomic context (e.g.,unemployment rates) or measures of consumer confidence in the future of theeconomy rather than the size of the out-group.

At an aggregate level, studies have descriptively associated the economiccontext and specifically the unemployment rate with stronger preferencesfor immigration restriction (Espenshade and Hempstead, 1996; Simon andAlexander, 1993). Subsequent studies have examined the role of individualeconomic vulnerability, theorizing that heightened threat directed at out-groups may be a rational response to a loss or projected loss of personaleconomic resources (Citrin et al., 1997). In other words, the citizen who


is faced with the prospect of unemployment or higher taxes may respond by“scapegoating” immigrants and supporting immigration restrictions (Quillian,1995; Citrin et al., 1997). A number of studies, especially in economics, lookspecifically at how competition over jobs may structure the immigration policypreferences of native workers of different skill levels (Facchini et al., 2008;Mayda, 2006; Hainmueller and Hiscox, 2007; Scheve and Slaughter, 2001;Hanson, Scheve, and Slaughter, 2011).

Results of the effects of individual-level vulnerability on attitudes towardimmigrants and immigration policy preferences vary substantially. Sides andCitrin (2007) find that in Europe, dissatisfaction with one’s personal eco-nomic situation is correlated with support for immigration restrictions. Earlier,Citrin et al. (1997) showed that in the United States, the prospect of highertaxes can trigger a nativist response. Scheve and Slaughter (2001) posit thatlow-skilled natives in the United States, a group that tends to be more vul-nerable to economic vicissitudes, tend to oppose immigration and Danielsand von der Ruhr (2003) suggest a similar relationship for European coun-tries. Hainmueller and Hiscox (2007) introduce the skill set of the immigrantpopulation into the equation to show that high-skilled natives who are com-paratively more immune to economic turbulence tend to be more inclusivein their response to immigrants than are low-skilled natives regardless of whatskills immigrants possess (Facchini and Mayda, 2011) but in a separate study,Hainmueller and Hiscox (2010) suggest that the “fiscal burden” of immi-grants may also increase opposition to immigration across the occupationalspectrum.

Theories that privilege economic motivations of prejudice do not typicallytake into account the social context, so it is not immediately obvious why in-dividuals who are economically insecure will respond with anti-immigrant oranti-minority policy preferences and whether any economically threatened in-dividual, regardless of his/her social environment, will be expected to advocatefor restriction.

The Conditional Relationship of Economic Vulnerability and Social Context

Individuals are loss averse, that is, they are sensitive to negative changesfrom their status quo (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979). This loss aversionmakes people very vulnerable to negative change in the economic contextbecause these contextual changes could translate to negative personal change.In the context of a strong economy, individuals who expect further gains or atleast economic stability are less likely to perceive out-groups as a threat. Whenthe pie is growing, people are content with their share of the pie and the relativegains of their group; thus, other groups are less important to them. However,when the economy is shrinking, individuals are faced with the prospect of realmaterial loss from their current status quo. Loss aversion makes people morelikely to perceive out-groups as a threat. In the context of a shrinking pie, the


game is transformed into a zero-sum one. In-groups that are in close contactwith out-groups may perceive restriction as the best strategy for recoveringtheir losses. Restriction of access or exclusion of out-groups from the politymay now be viewed as an acceptable solution to restoring the in-group to itsprevious level of assets.

Studies have found that fears about the status of the economy can elicitstrong negative responses in people (Doty, Peterson, and Winter, 1991;Conover and Feldman, 1986). Furthermore, the response is asymmetrical:individuals and organizations pay far more attention to bad news than togood news (Soroka, 2006). The effects of the economic context on how peo-ple make decisions about distribution of resources is best demonstrated inrecent experiments. As King et al. (2010:446) stress, “economic decline mayhave important implications for stigmatization and intergroup relations, ascompetition for resources [across groups] may engender frustration and ag-gression toward out-groups.” This competition does not have to be actual andobjectively measurable; it can be perceived or expected and attributable to ageneral sense that a negative change in the economy will harm the group. Inthe case of immigration, the material loss that is experienced or expected intimes of economic decline can affect citizens’ views of immigrants and alsocitizens’ immigration policy preferences. When the economy is growing andcitizens expect strong job prospects and expanding state services, they are notas concerned with immigrants. In fact, they may associate immigration witheconomic growth and the need of companies to hire workers who do notcurrently live in the home country. In good economic times, the presence of agrowing number of immigrants may be viewed as a neutral or even as a posi-tive development. However, when the pie is shrinking, citizens are faced withactual or expected losses. The experience of loss combined with the growingnumber of outsiders to a community can elicit negative attitudinal responsesand intensify support for restrictionist policies.

In summary, existing theories have focused either on the effects of inter-group threat or on the effects of the economic climate on people’s attitudestoward out-groups and their preferences for restrictive policies. However, thefindings in both camps are inconsistent and variable across space and time.Our theory seeks to connect these two literatures by suggesting that prej-udice flourishes at the interaction of economic vulnerability and geosocialproximity.

Hypotheses

In the spring of 2010, the state of Arizona enacted a new immigration law,entitled “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” (SB1070), which has since been the subject of much debate, mass protests, andfederal litigation. As specified in the preamble of the bill, the purpose of thenew legislation was to “make [undocumented immigrant] attrition through


law enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agenciesin Arizona” (State of Arizona, 2010). Given the discourse surrounding thislaw and the express intent of the legislation to produce “attrition,” we seekto understand the factors that influence Americans’ support for this approachoutside of Arizona. Clearly, this legislation is anti-immigrant in nature andaimed at deterring undocumented immigrants from moving into the state aswell as forcing those already present to leave the region. The academic andpopular press has pointed out since its passage that the legislation also has animplicit racial component (ACLU of Arizona, 2010).

This article tests several interrelated hypotheses. First, in accordance RGCT,we expect that an increasing presence of immigrants will be correlated withmore support for restrictionism. Second, in accordance with work on eco-nomic threat, we expect that concerns about the economy will be correlatedwith support for restrictionist policies. Our contextually based theory yieldstwo additional hypotheses that look at the interaction of the geosocial andeconomic context. First, we hypothesize that when people are optimistic aboutthe economy, their exposure to immigrants will not be correlated with theirsupport for restrictionist policies. Second, we expect that when people arepessimistic about the economy, the presence of immigrants will be correlatedwith greater support for restrictionist policies.

Data and Methods

We test our theory with data collected in three New England states. Weconducted a telephone survey among 1,080 residents of Massachusetts, Con-necticut, and Rhode Island in November 2010. The telephone numbers weregenerated through a random digit dialing method.

Dependent Variables

We employ as the dependent variable a question about how much supportor opposition the respondent expresses toward Arizona’s immigration law(commonly referred to as SB 1070). Specifically, the survey first asked them ifthey had heard about the new law. Then each respondent was asked:

The Arizona law requires all state and local police to enforce federal immigrationlaws and arrest people who are in the country without proper authorization.How much do you support or oppose the approach that Arizona is taking onimmigration? Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose, orstrongly oppose the Arizona law?

Due to the ordered nature of this variable, we employ ordered logisticanalysis in our models. This approach is the best way to model variables thatare not continuous (Borooah, 2001).


Independent Variables

We measure feelings about the economy through a standard consumerconfidence question that asks if people feel optimistic or pessimistic aboutthe economy in their state. The survey also included a question intendedto measure people’s perceptions of their social environment. Specifically, thequestion asked respondents to assess whether the immigrant population intheir neighborhood had increased, stayed the same, or decreased in the pastfive years.

We also controlled for several factors that we considered relevant to thedependent variable. First, we include controls for the respondent’s personaleconomic situation since people may be responding to personal economicstress instead of their perception of the state’s economy. Second, we controlfor the respondent’s affect toward government since someone who feels thatthey have very little “say” in government decisions may be less inclined togive the government more powers. Third, we control for how much ourwhite respondents consider their own fate to be tied to the fate of the Latinocommunity because feeling that one’s fate is linked to that of Latinos washypothesized to increase the likelihood that a respondent would oppose theArizona law. For example, if a person believed that they may be mistaken for animmigrant by the police because they share phenotypical traits with Latinos,this may cause the individual to object to the law on these grounds. Simply put,we hypothesize that those who feel that their own future is strongly tied to thefuture of Latinos will be less likely to support an Arizona-style immigration law.Finally, we also control for how salient the respondent perceives immigrationto be. We hypothesize that those who feel that immigration is a very pressingissue are more likely to support the Arizona law.

Our models also control for a number of standard demographic and polit-ical factors such as partisanship, ideology, education, age, gender, race, familystatus, and generational status (whether the respondent is a second-generationimmigrant). The exact wording for all questions along with descriptive statis-tics is included in Table 1.1

Support for Arizona Law and Neighborhood Immigration: New Englandand the Nation

It is of course possible that because our data are generated in the NewEngland states that immigration would not be as pressing an issue, yet de-scriptive statistics indicate that concern with immigration in New Englandfollows national trends. We compared the proportion of our respondents who

1Unfortunately, the survey does not have enough items for us to create multi-indicatorfactors for our measures. While that would be preferred, we are limited by the items includedin the survey.


TAB

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TAB

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cont

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5,76

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470.

5


favored/opposed the Arizona law and found that our survey results mirroredthe 20 national polls that we could identify that asked a similar question. In thenational polls, support for the Arizona law ranged from a high of 61 percentto a low of 50 percent. In the New England poll, 53 percent of respondentssupported the law. Opposition in the national polls ranged from a high of 40percent to a low of 24 percent. In the New England poll, 34 percent of therespondents opposed the law.

This is interesting given that census data suggest that New England has notexperienced the level of immigration growth seen elsewhere, especially whenit comes to undocumented immigration. The Pew Hispanic Center (2011)has estimated the undocumented population of Connecticut at 3.4 percent,Massachusetts 2.4 percent, and Rhode Island 3.0 percent. In California, un-documented immigrants make up 6.8 percent of the total population and inArizona 6 percent. In New England generally, the share of the population thatis undocumented is lower than the 3.7 percent national average.

Multivariate Results: Predicting Support for the Arizona Immigration Law

Before moving to our conditional hypothesis, we first test to see how wellour data support the existing theories. Again, we ran our models using orderedlogistic analysis in Stata. Due to the fact that our sample is drawn from threestates with unique political cultures, immigration contexts, and economies, wecluster the standard errors for the state. We also tried employing hierarchicallinear modeling techniques to explore the “nested” nature of the data. Theresults were equivalent to those presented here and are available from theauthors upon request.

Model 1 in Table 2 shows the results of a traditional model testing ourfirst two hypotheses. The model provides clear support for the group threathypothesis: a perceived increase in immigration is positively correlated withincreased support for the Arizona law. The model also shows that expectationsabout the state’s economy are highly correlated with political attitudes.

Of our control variables, it is interesting to note that concern about one’spersonal economic situation does not increase support for anti-immigrant poli-cies. It appears that sociotropic evaluations of the economy and not personaleconomic prospects have a larger impact on attitudes toward anti-immigrantpolicy. This finding is consistent with Kiewiet’s (1983) analysis of the impactof the economy on presidential voting. People who feel less empowered bytheir government and those who find the immigration issue to be importantare also more likely to support the law. Ideology, affiliation with the Demo-cratic Party, immigrant parentage, and age are all negatively correlated withsupporting the law.

Model 2 presents the fully specified model to probe for interactive ef-fects. The interaction term indicates there is indeed a conditional relation-ship between social context and economic concerns. When people are notconcerned about the future of the state economy, an increasing presence of


TABLE 2

Ordered Logit Regression Results for Support of Arizona Immigration Law

Model 1 Model 2

Neighborhood context 0.266∗∗∗ 0.521∗∗∗

(0.071) (0.115)Future of the economy −0.228∗∗ 0.438∗

(0.093) (0.216)Neighborhood context × future of the economy – −0.266∗∗

(0.088)Personal economic situation 0.054 0.068

(0.102) (0.096)Disaffection with government 0.191∗∗ 0.191∗∗

(0.064) (0.061)Latino-linked fate 0.072 0.068

(0.044) (0.046)Salience of immigration issue 0.125∗ 123∗

(0.051) (0.054)Democrat (ref: independent) −0.383∗ −0.408∗

(0.202) (0.202)Republican (ref: independent) 0.070 0.091

(0.312) (0.301)Ideology (low is conservative) −0.824∗∗∗ −0.814∗∗∗

(0.091) (0.091)White (ref: other) 0.378 0.322

(.336) (.369)Black (ref: other) −0.583 −0.630

(0.417) (0.428)Education −0.107 −0.098

(0.079) (0.080)Second generation −274∗ −0.270

(0.131) (0.142)Age −0.117∗∗ −0.110∗∗

(0.042) (0.034)Marital status (ref: not married) −0.322 −0.322

(0.223) (0.227)Female (ref: male) −0.110 −0.115

(0.098) (0.100)N 544 544Prob > chi2 0.00 0.00Psuedo R2 0.105 0.18

∗∗∗p < 0.001; ∗∗p < 0.01; ∗p < 0.05.Cells are ordered logit coefficients with standard errors clustered for the state. Analysisincludes only non-Latinos and nonimmigrants.

immigrants seems not to affect their attitudes toward state immigration pol-icy. However, when they are concerned about the state economy, the presenceof immigrants increases their likelihood of supporting strict immigration en-forcement. Since interpreting interaction terms, particularly with a nonlineardependent variable, can be difficult, we have graphed the conditional effect inFigure 1.


FIGURE 1

Likelihood of Strongly Supporting Arizona’s Immigration Law (SB 1070)

NOTE: Conditional contextual effects of change in neighborhood immigration. Predictedprobabilities and confidence intervals generated using SPOST for STATA (Long and Freese,2003). Predictions are the probability of strongly supporting Arizona’s SB 1070 law and arecomputed for the average respondent. The x-axis (change in neighborhood context) goesfrom 0 (immigration decreased a lot) to 4 (immigration increased a lot).

Figure 1 demonstrates the effect of our conditional model. Effects aremodeled by splitting out respondents who said they were pessimistic aboutthe economy from those who said they were optimistic (or indifferent) aboutthe economy. The scale on the immigrant context ranges from: the numberof immigrants in the neighborhood has decreased a lot (0) to the number ofimmigrants in the neighborhood has increased a lot (4). Among respondentswho said they were optimistic about the future of the state’s economy, as themodel coefficients suggest, there is no effect from an increase in immigrationto the neighborhood on their probability of supporting the Arizona law.However, among those who are pessimistic about the future of the economy,as immigration to their neighborhood increases (at least in their perception),the likelihood that they will support the Arizona law goes up dramatically. Theprobability of supporting the law increases by 43 percentage points from 0.13to 0.56, a highly significant effect given that we control for relevant politicalvariables.

Conclusions

Theories of intergroup threat have sought to isolate the effects of geosocialexposure and economic vulnerability without problematizing how economic


information interacts with cues from the social environment. Our study of-fers a strong indication that prejudice and nativism is predicated not only onone’s geosocial exposure to out-groups, but also on the economic conditionsunder which the interaction takes place. In this initial investigation, we findevidence that the threat of immigrants is only apparent when the future ofthe economy is thought to be in peril. When people are optimistic aboutthe future of the economy, they are less likely to feel threatened by the pres-ence of immigrants in their midst. This evidence supports our hypothesis.We hypothesized that when people were pessimistic about the economy, agrowing presence of immigrants in their neighborhood would increase theirsupport for restrictionist policies. The perception of threat by the growth ofimmigration, therefore, is conditioned on being pessimistic about the eco-nomic prospects of the state. When people are optimistic about the future ofthe economy, they do not look at their geosocial context for cues on how torespond to the challenges of immigration. This is also consistent with our hy-pothesis that under a positive economic forecast, people’s immigration policypreferences are not influenced by their geosocial context. Furthermore, it isimportant to note that among those who are optimistic about the economy,the baseline level of support for the Arizona immigration law is quite low(below 0.30).

The main implication of these findings is that people’s attitudes can changeand become more prejudicial when the external conditions are ripe. Peoplerespond to multiple environmental cues, only one of which is the social con-text. In addition to demographic changes in the local community, individualattitudes toward immigrants (and likely other minorities) are shaped by peo-ple’s sense of economic security. In turn, this suggests that explanations thatrest on a single explanation are not sufficient to account for the multifacetednature of intergroup interactions. Our analysis suggests that future researchneeds to develop more dynamic models of group interactions that take notonly the social but also the material and possibly the political context intoaccount. Furthermore, future research should interrogate how these factorsaffect people’s sense of group identity and levels of anxiety related to processesof social identification in order to understand how these variables furtherimpact prejudicial attitudes.

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Documents

Together in Good Times and Bad? How Economic Triggers Condition the Effects of Intergroup Threat