Get Close or Feel Threat? Perception of Imigrants Traits and Intergroup Relationship

Apart from direct contact, people get to know those from other groups through indirect information. Previous studies have shown that inforamtion relevant to personality traits of outgroup member has influence on intergroup attitudes. Based on the theory of Stereotype Content Model, three studies in the current research investigate how information about moral, social and competent traits of foreign immigrants will affect the local’s perception of social distance and their endorsements of colorblindness, multiculturalism and polyculturalism. In study 1, participants are primed by a discourse on immigration, which includes the information about three-dimenssion (competence, sociality, morality) traits of immigrants, then participants complete the measure of social distance and cultural ideologies. To explore if perception of similarity and social consensus information will make a difference, two follow-up studies are carried out. In study 2, the procedure is the same as study 1 except for the manipulation of percieved intergroup similarity. In study 3, participants are presented the evaluation of immigrants’ traits from other ingroup members. By now study 1 has been finished and the following studies are in process. The result so far showed that comparing to compentence-priming condition, social distance towards immigrants decreases more when participants learn that immigrants are with high level of social traits and moral traits.