Conferences

This work analyses the meditational role of threat perception on the relationship between prejudice and discrimination (opposition to immigration and opposition to naturalization of immigrants). In the first study, using probabilistic samples of 21 European countries (N = 36566) from European Social Survey (2002), we showed that the relationship between prejudice and opposition to immigration was more strongly mediated by realistic than symbolic threat perception. In Study 2, using representative ISSP samples of two countries with different traditions of immigration (Switzerland, N = 940; Portugal, N = 1514), we replicated results of the first study concerning opposition to immigration and we demonstrated that symbolic threat perception mediates the link between prejudice and opposition to the naturalization of immigrants. The different meditational effects suggest that realistic threat legitimates the link between prejudice and opposition to immigration, while symbolic threat perception legitimates the link between prejudice and opposition to naturalization.