Societal Threats and Immigrant Discrimination: The Role of Social Dominance Orientation and Essentialism

This study investigates how perceived societal threats interact with the social dominance orientation (SDO; an individual support for intergroup hierarchies and inequalities) to influence negative attitudes toward immigrants through essentialist beliefs. In particular, essentialist beliefs can function as a biased psychological device activated by societal threats when individuals report higher SDO. These beliefs restore confidence in social hierarchies promoting negative attitudes toward minorities (i.e., immigrants). Two correlational studies were conducted with Italian participants. In Study 1 (N = 191), self-report prejudice measures were employed, whereas in Study 2 (N = 288), a resource allocation paradigm was used. A moderated mediation model was tested, in which perceived societal threats were associated with greater essentialist beliefs only among participants higher on SDO; essentialist beliefs were, in turn, associated with greater self-reported prejudice (Study 1) and biased resource allocation that disadvantaged immigrants (Study 2). The results support our hypothesis that societal threats do not uniformly exacerbate prejudice but depend on a person's ideological posture. Specifically, under perceived threat, only high-SDO individuals rely on essentialist beliefs, increasing negative attitudes toward minorities. The present findings emphasise the role of ideological belief systems in fostering prejudice when socio-political contexts are perceived as mostly unstable.