Empathy and national identification as predictors of immigrant prejudice across European countries

Abstract

Recent immigration flows into Europe have been repeatedly shown to be associated with rising anti-immigrant attitudes among the native population, which are, in turn, related with discrimination and, unfortunately, even violent behaviors towards immigrants. Anti-immigrant attitudes undermine democracy and thus pose an indirect threat to the foundation of many European countries. It is, therefore, of utmost importance to investigate factors that may reduce this hostility. The present study focuses on two such factors, namely empathy and national identification. Additionally, we integrate cultural values into our study to investigate their role. To test our hypotheses, we used the European Values Study 2017 data (32 countries, with 1500 individuals from each country on average) and standardized scores of Hofstede’s country-level individualism/collectivism scale. Using a two-step regression analysis procedure, we found that the likelihood of being prejudiced decreases with increasing empathy and is lower among individuals with a civic-national identification than among individuals with other national identification types. The effect of national identification was stronger than that of empathy. We also found that individualism strengthens the negative link between empathy and prejudice. The findings reveal that inclusive emotional (empathy) and normative (national identification) tendencies toward immigrants decrease the probability of prejudice among natives. Furthermore, empathy is found to be more likely to reduce prejudice as levels of individualism in a country increase.