Social Empathy and Support for Hardline Immigration Policies

Background: Anti-immigration rhetoric has escalated immensely under both Trump administrations. This rhetoric has been coupled with executive-branch policies that have targeted undocumented individuals and families, resulting in family separations at the border, increasingly stringent asylum requirements, and the deportation of persons without proper legal proceedings. Additionally, the Trump administration recently issued an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship. Recent public opinion polls suggest that many U.S. residents approve of President Trump’s immigration policies, and exit polling suggests that immigration was a central issue for Trump supporters in the 2024 election. This study sought to better understand factors associated with support for Trump-era immigration policies in particular, with a specific focus on a construct called social empathy. Social empathy adds to interpersonal empathy by requiring a contextual understanding of systemic barriers faced by marginalized groups as well as macro perspective-taking.

Methods: Data were drawn from two cross-sectional studies. In Study 1, we surveyed an online sample of U.S. adults (n=417), while in Study 2, we recruited students from a public university in the U.S. South (n=200). Participants completed a measure assessing support for Trump-era hardline immigration policies (Study 1, 2 α=.96, .94), as well as measures assessing interpersonal and social empathy. The latter was assessed via the Social Empathy Index, which includes two subscales: contextual understanding of systemic barriers (Study 1, 2 α=.93, .89) and macro perspective-taking (Study 1, 2 α=.85, .74). We constructed hierarchical OLS regression models for each. The first block included common demographic indicators associated with immigration attitudes. The second block included all subscales of interpersonal empathy. The third block included both social empathy subscales. We hypothesized that social empathy would (1) be negatively associated with support for hardline immigration policies and (2) account for more model variance than interpersonal empathy.

Results: Both of our hypotheses were supported. Across both studies, contextual understanding of systemic barriers was significantly, negatively associated with support for hardline immigration policies and, along with political ideology, among the largest predictors in the model’s final block (Study 1, 2 β =-.61, -.37). Macro perspective-taking, on the other hand, was not significantly related to support for hardline immigration policies, nor were the majority of the facets of interpersonal empathy. In fact, the addition of the interpersonal empathy subscales to the second block of the hierarchical model did not significantly improve overall model fit, only increasing the R² from .40 to .41 in Study 1 and .51 to .52 in Study 2. Conversely, the addition of the social empathy subscales to the third block significantly improved overall model fit (Study 1, 2 R² =.59, .58).

Implications: These findings suggest that while interpersonal empathy is largely unrelated to support for hardline immigration policies, social empathy might be a prime target to shift such attitudes. Prior literature suggests that social empathy is malleable and that related frameworks can be effectively incorporated into, for example, educational curriculum. Increasing contextual understanding of systemic barriers faced by immigrant populations in particular might prove to be a critical point of intervention.