Personality and Prejudice: Traits, Values and Attitudes toward Immigration Gian Vittorio Caprara Michele Vecchione “Sapi

1. Personality and Prejudice: Traits, Values and Attitudes toward Immigration Gian Vittorio Caprara Michele Vecchione “Sapienza” University of Rome Centro Interuniversitario per la Ricerca sulla Genesi e sullo Sviluppo delle Motivazioni Prosociali e Antisociali Padova, October 2008

2. Personality is a self-regulation system, which include Traits, Values and Self-beliefs

3. Personality traits • Traits are enduring tendencies to behave in habitual ways associated to consistent patterns of thought and feelings • They describe what people are likeand vary in the frequency and intensity of their occurrence

4. Values • Values are cognitive representations of desirable, abstract, transituational goals that serve as guiding principlesin people’s lives • They refer to what people consider importantand vary in their priority as standards for judging behaviour, events, and people

5. The Five Factor Model In the domain of traits, many researchers agree that most of personality’sbehavioral tendenciesand descriptors can be traced back to five basic factors, the so-called Big Five, which capture the essential features of all traits

6. Values In the domain of values, Schwartz has provided a theory that has paved the way forsystematic studiesand comparisons among countries on the impact that values exert on various domains of functioning

7. SCHWARTZ ‘S VALUES SYSTEM (1992) SELF-TRASCENDENCE OPENNESS TO CHANGE Self- Universalism Direction Stimulation Benevolence Hedonism Conformity Tradition Achievement Security Power SELF-ENHANCEMENT CONSERVATION • SCHWARTZ, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. In M. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, 25, 1–65.

8. Traits and Values • Although traits and values are rooted in different intellectual traditions, they are closely related to each other • In the domain of politics, both traits and values have proved to affect political preferences beyond traditional socio-demographic variables, like age, gender, education, and income • Basic values have proved to fully mediate the influence of traits

9. 1998 2004 2004 Conscien-tiousness R2 = .26 .68 Security .62 -.30 .28 R2 = .18 Openness .44 .27 Ideology .36 -.43 .58 Universalism .16 Ideology: 1=extreme left; 2=left; 3=center-left; 4=center; 5=center-right; 6=right; 7=extreme right Agreeable-ness R2 = .23 Underlined coefficients are not significant. • CAPRARA, G. V., & VECCHIONE, M. (in press). The mediational role of values in linking traits to political orientation. Asian Journal of Social Psychology

10. Values and Attitudes toward Immigration • Previous findings from a study on 19 European countries have shown that self-transcendence displays a positive effect on support for immigration, whereas conservation displays a negative effect • These results are robust also after accounting for several individual and contextual variables • Effects are found to be similar across countries • Davidov, E., Meuleman, B., Billiet, J., & Schmidt, P. (2008). Values and Support for Immigration: A Cross-Country • Comparison, European Sociological Review, 1-17.

11. Hypotheses • We expected that both traits (openness) and values(self-transcendence and conservation) would account for a significant portion ofvariability in attitudes toward immigration

12. Hypotheses • Previous findings have shown that openness is inversely related to authoritarianism (McCrae & Costa, 1997), and positively related to tolerance for diversity, nonconformity (John & Srivastava, 1999) and liberal sociopolitical values (McCrae, 1996) • Thus, we expected that openness would be related to a positive attitude toward immigration

13. Hypotheses • People who give more importance to values that emphasize respect of norms and social expectations, social order and stability (conservation), would be less willing to accept immigrants • People who give more importance to values that emphasize tolerance, understanding, and concern for the welfare of all people (self-transcendence), would be more willing to accept immigrants (Sagiv and Schwartz, 1995)

14. Hypotheses • Ultimately, we hypothesized thatvaluesfully mediatethe influence exerted bytraits

15. A scale for measuring Attitudes toward Immigration Principal Axis Factoring. Eigenvalues: 1.86, .70, 45 Variance explained: 44.62% Cronbach’s Alpha = .68 • Schwartz, S.H., Caprara G.V., Vecchione, M. Basic Values Organize Political Attitudes and Through Them Influence Political Choice: A Longitudinal Analysis. Submitted.

16. Correlations Between Big Five and Accepting Immigrants BIG FIVE ACCEPTING IMMIGRANTS • ENERGY/EXTRAVERSION .03 • AGREEABLENESS .23*** • CONSCIENTIOUSNESS .01 • EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY .13*** • OPENNESS .39*** *** p<.001

17. Correlations Between Values and Accepting Immigrants BASIC VALUES • SECURITY -.26*** • CONFORMISM -.19*** • TRADITION -.22*** • BENEVOLENCE .18*** • UNIVERSALISM .30*** • SELF-DIRECTION .19*** • STIMULATION .14*** • HEDONISM .02 • ACHIEVEMENT -.07 • POWER -.11*** ACCEPTING IMMIGRANTS *** p<.001

18. Correlations Between Values and Accepting Immigrants HIGHER ORDER VALUES • OPENNESS TO CHANGE .19*** • CONSERVATION -.26*** • SELF-TRANSCENDENCE .27*** • SELF-ENHANCEMENT -.10*** ACCEPTING IMMIGRANTS *** p<.001

19. Traits, values, and attitudes toward immigration Basic Values χ2=(96)683.82; p<.001; CFI=.918; RMSEA=.061; SRMR=.062 pvq5 pvq14 pvq21 pvq31 pvq35 R2 =.11 Security R2 =.49 -.63 -.33 Accepting Immigration Openness .28 .42 .61 Universalism R2 =.18 OC OE Item1 Item2 Item3 pvq3 pvq8 pvq19 pvq23 pvq29 pvq40 OC (Openness to culture) and OE (Openness to Experience) are the two facets of Openness in the questionnaire used for measuring traits. All coefficients are statistically significant. The correlation between Security and Benevolence is .46.

20. Traits, values, and attitudes toward immigration Higher-order Values When estimated, the direct effect of openness is not significant (β=.01,p=.94) χ2=(30)313.17; p<.001; CFI=.946; RMSEA=.075; SRMR=.048 Sec Conf Trad R2 =.14 Conservation R2 =.46 -.62 -.37 Immigration Openness .46 .67 Self tran- scendence R2 =.22 OC OE Item1 Item2 Item3 Univ Ben OC (Openness to culture) and OE (Openness to Experience) are the two facets of Openness in the questionnaire used for measuring traits. All coefficients are statistically significant. The correlation between Conservation and Self-transcendence is .62.

21. Conclusion • The influence of traits (openness) is largely indirect and mediated through values • Conservation values underlie opposition to immigration, whereas Self-enhancement values underlie willingness to accept immigrants • Likely, the trade-off between giving high priority to promoting the welfare of all others and avoiding personal, national, and interpersonal threat, influences readiness to accept immigrants (Schwartz, 2008)