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[Puzzle map of Europe]
A photograph of a puzzle that shows a map of Europe when it is completed. There is a blue border and the map itself shows from the arctic circle to the Mediterranean Sea.
[Puzzle map of the globe]
Two photographs of a puzzle that shows a map of the globe when completed. There is a blue border around the edge and the map is split between two connected circles. The left has Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia on it and the right has the Americas on it. In the second photo two of the pieces aren't in place.
Our Own and the Others: What Happens to Perceptions of Immigrant Threat when Value Priorities Collide?
With immigration controversies increasingly found at the forefront of the European public arena, understanding the social and cultural forces driving negative perceptions of immigrants becomes a pressing task of academic scholarship. Situated within the broader theoretical framework of group-conflict theories, human values theory and social identity theory encourage different interpretations of how our interest to the welfare of the people closest to us (benevolence) and the broader human community (universalism) can inform attitudes towards immigrants. Human values theory argues for a unidirectional, negative effect of benevolence and universalism on negative perceptions of immigrants, while social identity theory suggests that, unlike universalism, benevolence would increase such perceptions. The present study seeks to examine how self-transcending human values (a.k.a. benevolence and universalism) affect perceptions of immigrant threat and whether the locus of our value priority matters. Using nationally pooled data from the European Social Survey (ESS) for 15 European countries, the results provide robust evidence that benevolence and universalism affect perceived immigrant threat in opposite directions, generally aligning with the propositions of the social identity theory. The group we place our loyalty matters. At the same time, national context matters too suggesting that grand scheme interpretations of this phenomenon fall short. Theoretical implications and future directions are further discussed.
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