National definitions and the identificationprejudice relationship

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National definitions and the identification-prejud
ice relationship

• Sam Pehrson

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People I work with Rupert Brown (Sussex) Vivian
Vignoles (Sussex) Hanna Zagefka (Royal Holloway,
University of London)
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in the course of Britain having become a nation
of immigrants, it would have ceased to be a
nation
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Nationalism

• A political principle (Gellner 1983)
• Representing (imagining) a political community
  in a particular way (Anderson 1983)
• The cultural basis of modernity (Greenfeld 1996)
• A discursive practice (Billig 1991)

• An attitude (Kosterman Feshbach 1989)
• Social identity (Mummendey et al. 2001)

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• Intensity of identification seems to be of no
  importance for the development of a special
  acculturation attitude (Piontkowski et al. 2001)
• Patriotism -ve relationship with exclusion in
  some countries (Codenders Scheepers, 2003)
• No significant relationship between patriotism
  and attitudes towards immigrants in Canada (Esses
  et al. 2004)
• Relationship complex and in need of further
  investigation (Jackson et al. 2001)

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National definitions

• Ethnic vs. civic national definition
• Different historical origins (Hobsbawm, 1990)
• Representations differ within and between
  different countries.

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National definitions

• The identification-prejudice relationship depends
  on how the nation is defined.
• A positive relationship only in the case of
  ethnic national definition.

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National definitions

• Maddens et al. (2000)
• Weldon (2006)
• Pehrson et al. (in press)

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Multilevel analysis

• ISSP 2003 dataset
• 37,030 individuals 31 countries
• National definition that prevails in a given
  context

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Multilevel analysis

• Avoiding compositional and ecological fallacies.
• Multilevel regression essential tool for
  systematically contextualizing psychological
  findings on prejudice (Pettigrew, 2006)

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• National identification
• How close do you feel to country?
• How proud are you of being nationality?
• Anti-immigrant prejudice
• Immigrants increase crime rates
• Immigrants are generally good for countrys
  economy (reverse coded)
• Immigrants take jobs away from people who were
  born in country
• Immigrants improve country society by bringing
  in new ideas and cultures (reverse coded)
• Government spends too much money assisting
  immigrants.
• The number of immigrants coming to country is
  (too many - too few)

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• National definitions
• Some people say the following things are
  important for being truly nationality. Others
  say they are not important. How important do you
  think each of the following is?
• Citizenship
• Language
• Ancestry

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Predicting anti-immigrant prejudice

• Individual predictors
• National identification ? .01
• Definitions
• Civic ? .08
• Linguistic ? .02
• Ancestry ? .27
• Contextual predictors
• GNP ? .12
• National identification ? -.40
• Definitions
• Civic ? -.41
• Linguistic ? .12
• Ancestry ? .22

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Predicting anti-immigrant prejudice

• Contextual moderators of identification-prejudice
  slope
• GDP ? .68
• National definitions
• Civic ? -.50
• Linguistic ? .29
• Ethnic ? .09

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Summary

• Range of identification-prejudice correlations
  from -.06 to .37.
• Variation partly accounted for by how ones
  nation is defined on average by co-nationals.
• Collective level national identification
  negatively predicts prejudice.

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• interaction between psychological and
  social phenomena is merely a useless slogan
  unless it can be translated into a way of
  thinking about research problems and unless it
  determines the manner in which research is
  conducted.
• Tajfel (1981, p. 24)

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Thank you for your attention