A research team wrote, “Our goal was to assess U.S. citizens’ mental models of immigration, i.e., their beliefs and attitudes towards it, but also their perceptions of the risks and benefits it poses…. Research shows that when perceived threat and social identity become involved, our policy stances can become sacralized, transforming into absolutist, moralized, non-negotiable values. These sacred values do not operate like regular values, which can be reevaluated if one is willing to make trade-offs….Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s). Group norms are the informal rules that govern behavior in a group. They set expectations of how to behave, whether in terms of eating a meal or interacting with outsiders.”
The top three sacralized open (i.e. immigration incluseive) stances are:
— Stopping family separation (47% of respondants cited this, the most strongly felt issue of inclusivists).
— Being a nation of immigrants (rather than preserving a white and Christian culture) (37%)
— Stopping construction of the border wall (33%)
The top three sacralized immigration restrictive stances are:
— Withholding public benefits from unauthorized immigrants (33% of respondents, the most strongly felt issue of restrictionists)
—Stopping undocumented immigration (22%)
—Continuing to build the border wall (21%)
From “What Immigration Issues Do Americans Hold Sacred? A Psychological Journey into American Attitudes Towards Immigrants” by Nichole Argo, Ph.D. and Kate Jassin, Ph.D.