Mula, Silvana and Di Santo, Daniela and Resta, Elena and Bakhtiari, Farin and Baldner, Conrad and Molinario, Erica and Pierro, Antonio and Gelfand, Michele, J. and Denison, Emmy and Agostini, Maximilian and Belanger, Jocelyn J and Gutzkow, Ben and Kreienkamp, Jannis and Abakoumkin, Georgios and Abdul Khaiyom, Jamilah Hanum and Leander, N Pontus (2022) Concern with COVID-19 pandemic threat and attitudes towards immigrants: the mediating effect of the desire for tightness. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 3. ISSN 2666-6227 (In Press)
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Abstract
Tightening social norms is thought to be adaptive for dealing with collective threat yet it may have nega- tive consequences for increasing prejudice. The present research investigated the role of desire for cultural tightness, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, in increasing negative attitudes towards immigrants. We used participant-level data from 41 countries ( N = 55,015) collected as part of the PsyCorona project, a cross- national longitudinal study on responses to COVID-19. Our predictions were tested through multilevel and SEM models, treating participants as nested within countries. Results showed that people’s concern with COVID- 19 threat was related to greater desire for tightness which, in turn, was linked to more negative attitudes towards immigrants. These findings were followed up with a longitudinal model ( N = 2,349) which also showed that people’s heightened concern with COVID-19 in an earlier stage of the pandemic was associated with an increase in their desire for tightness and negative attitudes towards immigrants later in time. Our findings offer insight into the trade-offs that tightening social norms under collective threat has for human groups.
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