Exploring the Role of Political Identification and Moral Foundations in Perceived Threats from Latino Immigrants

Background: Today, of the 42 million immigrants estimated to be residing the U.S., Latino immigrants account for more than half of this population. The large representation of Latino immigrants situates them at the forefront of the immigration issues in the United States. In the past two decades, Latino immigrants have been portrayed as not only threats to American jobs, but also as threats to the American culture and values. Building on intergroup threat theory and justification factors in prejudice literature, this study explores justification factors in perceived threats from Latino immigrants, with a focus on the role of political identification and moral foundations. 

Methods: We recruited 208 adult Americans from Amazon Turk Platform, among whom 187 participants completed the survey questions. Majority of the respondents were White/Caucasian American (81 %); and the rest were Asian or African American (19 %). We categorized participants into liberal, conservative, and neutral group based on their self-reported political identification. We measured the participant’s perceived realistic threat (seven items) and symbolic threat (five items) from Latino immigrants using an adapted version developed by Stephan and Ybarra (1999). Moral foundation was measured using scale developed by Graham et al. (2009). Stepwise multivariate regression analysis was employed to test the main and interaction effects of political identification and moral foundations on perceived threats from Latino immigrants.

Results:  Participants in liberal [M (SD) =2.83 (0.96)] group were found to be less likely to perceive high level of threat from Latino immigrants compared to those who identify with conservative [M (SD) =4.22 (1.04)] and neutral [M (SD) =3.54 (1.09)] group. However, moral foundations were found to alter this relationship. Higher levels of fairness was associated with lower levels of perceived realistic threat from Latino immigrants [β (SE) = -0.343(0.169)*]; and higher levels of harm was associated with lower levels of perceived symbolic threat [β (SE)= -0.221(0.097)*]. Additionally, there was an interactions effect of political identification and in-group [β (SE)= -0.297 (0.093)***], purity [β (SE)= -0.348 (0.118)***], and authority [β (SE)= 0.535 (0.087)***] on participant’s perceived realistic threat from Latino immigrants. Similar interactions were observed for participant’s perceived symbolic threat.

 Conclusion:  This study shows that Americans who identify, as conservatives may be more likely to perceive threats from Latino immigrants compared to those who politically identified as liberals. However, to the extent that Latino immigrants may be perceived to be threatening to the stratified American socio-economic and political structure, and the moral foundations, both liberals and conservatives may perceive higher levels of threat from Latino immigrants, which can justify discriminatory actions against Latino immigrants. Social workers can help reduce perception of threats from Latinos through awareness creation and advocacy that encourage concerns for harm and justice and fairness. Social workers can engage in critical discourse at both micro and macro level to highlight the humanity of Latino immigrants and encourage the development of empathy to foster the moral ethics of fairness and justice to encourage positive view of Latino immigrants and reduce potential for discrimination.