Kids in Cages: When Empathy-Based Immigration Appeals Are "Too Much"

• In Event: Immigration Attitudes & Beliefs

Abstract

Generally, we know that empathy yields concern for minority groups and support for policies that aid that group. However, news about extreme suffering, oppression, and cruelty, which is often meant to trigger empathy and helping behavior, can sometimes feel like “too much.” Can empathetic appeals sometimes backfire, leading individuals to disengage from an issue and deprioritize it in their political decision-making? We consider the case of U.S. immigration policy and immigrant experiences at the U.S.-Mexico border. We use a 3-condition experiment to test whether triggering empathy for a group can sometimes, counter-intuitively, decrease helping behaviors by triggering avoidance mechanisms when particularly disturbing in nature. We look at the effects of these distinct empathy appeals on a variety of attitudes toward immigration policies ranging in terms of being restrictionist versus anti-restrictionist, as well as willingness to engage in various pro-immigrant behaviors and reliance on immigration as a central issue in determining vote choice. We the influence of immigration attitudes on vote choice via the marginal effects of hypothetical candidates’ immigration stances in a conjoint experiment. We consider our findings in terms of possible limits of the positive effects of empathy appeals, as well as how we can understand American public opinion regarding immigration broadly. This study also pushes the literature on immigration attitudes forward by identifying what moves people from passively supporting immigration to actively seeking anti-restrictionist policy and making immigration a high priority issue in their political decision making.

Authors

• Frank John Gonzalez, University of Arizona

• Allison Jane Sauer, University of California, Los Angeles