How Disgust Sensitivity Influences Support for Immigration Policy

• In Event: Group Conflict and Attitudes Toward Immigration

Abstract

Scholars interested in public opinion have become increasingly aware of the importance of non-cognitive processes tied to emotional responses in understanding how citizens react to political issues. Several scholars have emphasized the utility of psychological and biological concepts in understanding public policy and public opinion attitudes. This project moves us forward on this trajectory as we investigate the impact of the behavioral immune system, namely variations in a central human emotion that has been identified previously as impacting political views and policy preferences, namely disgust.

Differences across individuals in their sensitivity to disgust drive our theoretical predictions. If emotions have a biological basis, as widely acknowledged, and we find that specific emotions affect public opinion on a large number of policy issues as several recent scholars assert, these effects should be robust to widely differing sociopolitical contexts. This study provides the opportunity to put these theories to an extreme test as we propose to analyze data we have collected using public opinion data in Turkey, the United States, and Norway which we will compare across countries to see if we find similar effects. We test a previously confirmed set of hypotheses concerning disgust sensitivity and opposition to immigration in a context where trust in government is vastly different, and the reality of refugees and immigration is radically different. Turkey has taken in 2.7 million Syrian refugees, in comparison the United States has taken less than 20,000 Syrians. Yet we expect the emotion of disgust to have similar effects on attitudes towards refugees. Finding similar effects across widely different systems and contexts (Norway, US, Turkey) will provide powerful generalization of the ability of disgust to affect personal opinions on a very different issue, immigration.

Authors

• Richard E. Matland, Loyola University, Chicago

• Cengiz Erisen, Binghamton University