J. Jetten et al., Economic Prosperity and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments
downturn when considering immigrants who are less educated and skilled? And, are symbolic threat arguments used more in relation to highly skilled immigrants when the economy is prosperous? Future research should also focus on further examining whether the selection of particular arguments indeed reflected strategic considerations about what type of argument would best fit the context (as we suggest here). One way to assess this would be by examining the effectiveness of the arguments – whether attitude change among those exposed to arguments differs as a function of the economic performance condition.
In Sum For the first time, we showed experimentally that the perceived economic climate changes how people form arguments to convince others that immigration is a problem for society. By placing participants in the shoes of a speechwriter for an anti-immigrant leader we showed that such “speechwriters” use elements of the economic reality they find themselves in to create a compelling antiimmigrant argument. In line with a growing body of social identity literature on leadership and social influence (Haslam et al., 2011; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001), these findings fit with the notion that those who seek to influence others are “crafty identity entrepreneurs” who enhance the persuasiveness of their message by tailoring their messages strategically, thereby taking into account their knowledge of the needs and wants of their audience, and the overarching political and economic context. Acknowledgments This research was supported by the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project funding scheme (DP120100053).
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