Ethnic Change and Polarization over Immigration
In the American Public
ABSTRACT
This article explores the interplay between ethnic change and individual psychology in shaping
mass opinion on immigration. Recent research highlights a “personality cleavage” underlying
the left-right divide in American politics. Extending this into the domain of immigration, we
argue this cleavage should be an important factor shaping citizens’ reactions to ethnic change.
Using national survey data and a national survey experiment, we demonstrate that uncertainty
aversion moderates the effect of perceived and actual ethnic change on citizens’ immigration
attitudes. Our analysis reveals that ethnic change polarizes citizens by personality as those averse
to uncertainty feel heightened cultural threat from ethnic change, while those open to uncertainty
and novelty feel less threatened. As such traits are associated with left-right identifications, our
results suggest that polarization of the American public over immigration, rather than being a
mere product of top-down elite influence, is significantly driven by the interaction of citizen and
context.
Word Count: 8,460
Keywords: immigration, public opinion, ethnic change, polarization, personality, ideology
INTRODUCTION
The United States is growing more ethnically diverse each year, with steady immigration
and a rapidly growing Hispanic population altering the sociocultural landscape surrounding
many American citizens. What are the consequences of ethnic change for the politics of
immigration in the United States? More specifically, what are the effects of ethnic change on
citizens’ opinions on immigration? At present, the opinion literature on immigration comes up
surprisingly short in providing a satisfactory answer to these questions. The lion’s share of
studies in the opinion research analyzing Americans’ immigration policy preferences focus on
the effects of the size of, rather than the change in, the immigrant populations surrounding
citizens. Beyond the evident limitation of not directly addressing ethnic change, the results from
studies addressing the effects of the size of immigrant populations are notoriously inconclusive.
While lay intuition may suggest that immigration-driven ethnic change across the nation may
explain observable patterns of nativist resentment and anti-immigrant sentiment among the
American public, the empirical research has yet to establish a strong connection between
growing immigrant populations and individual opposition to immigration.
In this article, we engage the question of the impact of ethnic change on mass opinion on
immigration and offer two key innovations over the standard approach taken in past research.
First, we explore the effect of over-time growth in, rather than the size of, immigrant populations
as the key feature of these populations responsible for driving public opinion. Second, in contrast
to previous research which largely assumes that the effects of ethnic context are uniform across
all citizens, we offer a novel framework that explores heterogeneity in the effects of ethnic
change on citizens’ attitudes toward immigration. Recent research demonstrates that a
significant portion of the variance in ideological orientations in the contemporary American
2
public can be explained by differences on a small set of core personality traits (e.g. Hetherington
and Weiler 2009; Jost et al. 2003; Mondak 2010). Extending this perspective to immigration, we
argue that this “personality cleavage” should be highly influential in shaping how citizens
respond to ethnic change with important consequences for polarization of opinion across the leftright divide in American politics.
This article develops the differential adaptation hypothesis, which argues that substantial
ethnic change should serve as an environmental determinant of opinion on immigration, but that
citizens should react differently to ethnic change conditional on their relative aversion or
attraction to epistemic uncertainty and novelty. The rapid influx of members of racial and ethnic
out-groups can be viewed as threatening to existing cultural institutions, and implies uncertainty
in one’s environment and one’s interaction with fellow citizens. As Jost and Hunyady (2005)
note, “There is a good match between needs to reduce uncertainty” and the experience of
institutional change as threatening, because “preserving the status quo allows one to maintain
what is familiar while rejecting the uncertain prospect of social change” (p. 262). Such change
could, however, also be viewed in a positive light, as diversity and opportunity enhancing. As
Gerber et al. (2010) argue with respect to institutional change generally, “It follows that this
attraction to novelty and tolerance for complexity encourage not only overall liberalism, but also
support for liberal social and economic policies, which typically involve new programs or
interventions that overturn existing practices” (p. 116). According to the differential adaptation
hypothesis, there should be differential responsiveness to rapid demographic change across
personality types, such that the uncertainty averse should see ethnic change as threatening, while
those comfortable with uncertainty and attracted to novelty should find such changes desirable.
3
We test the differential adaptation hypothesis in two steps. In Study 1, using the 2005
CID national survey and data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we demonstrate that traits related to
uncertainty aversion moderate the effect of local ethnic change on the perception that immigrants
pose a cultural threat. In Study 2, we report the results of an internet-based national survey
experiment that manipulated perceptions of ethnic change. The data from this study strongly
reinforce the cross-sectional findings from Study 1—namely, that citizens with a strong aversion
to uncertainty are significantly more culturally threatened than their uncertainty-tolerant
counterparts by induced perceptions of ethnic change. In addition to this core finding, we also
demonstrate the political relevance of the interplay between personality and ethnic change
through the estimation of a structural equation model linking perceptions of cultural threat to
support for restrictive immigration policies. The results from our analyses demonstrate that the
differential experience of cultural threat, across personality, in response to perceived or actual
local ethnic change ultimately results in a substantial deepening of polarization on immigration
policy within the American public.
In total, this article makes several important contributions. First, it contributes to the
opinion literature on immigration. We move beyond group-size-based measures of ethnic context
that tend to dominate the contextual research and instead focus on ethnic change as the principle
feature of citizens’ ethnic context driving their opinions on immigration. Further, we reconcile
tension between intergroup threat and contact theories by demonstrating heterogeneity in the
effects of ethnic change, with change showing opposite effects across citizen types. And last, we
demonstrate that the effects of ethnic change on citizens’ policy preferences are mediated by
cultural threat perceptions, thus offering the opinion literature a mediated-moderated effects
model of opinion formation on immigration. Beyond these specific contributions, we believe our
4
paper also makes a more general contribution to the study of public opinion and political
behavior. By assessing the interplay of large-scale, objective contextual processes and individual
psychological factors, we fuse the macro with the micro into an integrated approach for
understanding political behavior.
IMMIGRATION, ETHNIC CONTEXT, AND PUBLIC OPINION
The ethnic composition of citizens’ residential environment has long stood as a primary
factor hypothesized to account for public opinion on immigration. Underlying the research on the
contextual sources of opinion on immigration rests the issue of identifying which aspect of
immigrant populations is responsible for driving public opinion. A substantial body of opinion
research exists that explores the effect of the size of the immigrant population surrounding
citizens on their immigration policy preferences. The racial or power threat hypothesis (Blalock
1967; Key 1949), when translated from White-Black relations to the case of immigration, argues
that anti-immigrant sentiment and policy support will be greater among citizens residing in more
immigrant heavy areas (Hopkins 2010). This line of opinion research, however, has generated
notoriously mixed results, with some studies finding limited evidence in support of the power
threat hypothesis (Campbell, Wong, and Citrin 2006; Tolbert and Grummel 2003), other studies
finding that residing near large immigrant populations reduces anti-immigrant sentiment and
policy support (Fetzer 2000; Hood and Morris 1997), and the bulk of the research finding that
the size of local immigrant populations exerts no significant effect on citizens’ immigration
policy preferences (Cain, Citrin, and Wong 2000; Citrin et al. 1990; Citrin, Reingold, Walters,
and Green 1990; Dixon and Rosenbaum 2004; Taylor 1998).
While several factors have been proposed to explain the inconsistency of results for
group-size based measures of ethnic context, and the relative empirical weakness of the power
5
threat hypothesis (e.g. degree of contact, Hood and Morris 2000; residential segregation, Rocha
and Espino 2008), they ignore perhaps its most defining aspect, which is its focus on the size,
rather than the growth, of immigrant populations. Hopkins (2010) argues that American citizens
are surprisingly unaware of their demographic surroundings, and that occupational and
residential segregation limit the visibility of immigrants to American citizens. Citing a principal
axiom of prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky 1979), Hopkins reasons that while the average
citizen may filter out vast quantities of information streaming in from their environment,
significant changes in their environment are more likely to capture attention. Given these
considerations, Hopkins concludes that while contemporary levels of ethnic diversity may elude
citizens’ attention, significant changes in the level of ethnic diversity are less likely to evade
notice. Hopkins (2010) argument for focusing on immigrant growth, rather than population size,
is strongly supported by the results from his analysis of time series cross sectional survey data, as
well as by other recent research on immigration policy and opinion (Alexseev 2006; Citrin et al.
1990; Newman 2012; Newman et al. 2012; Newman and Johnson 2012).
Beyond the limitations of the group size framework, extant research implicitly assumes
that context exerts a uniform effect across all citizens. While the literature has seen the
emergence of a new line of contextual studies exploring the conditional effects of ethnic context
(Branton and Jones 2005; Hood and Morris 2000; Hopkins 2010; Oliver and Mendelberg 2000;
Rocha and Espino 2008), this work restricts its focus to how the effects of local minority
populations may be conditional upon other contextual-level or broader environmental factors.
What is missing from the opinion research is an attempt to move the literature forward by
engaging the issue of whether important differences across citizens shape how they react to
factors operative within their ethnic context.
6
PERSONALITY AND DIFFERENTIAL ADAPTATION
We pursue individual-level heterogeneity in reactions to ethnic change with a practical
purpose, namely, with respect to its implications for the politics of immigration. The extent to
which individual differences in response matter for American politics is conditional on the
degree to which such differences align with politically relevant divisions. More specifically,
they will matter if they align with the left-right dimension of American politics, and thus map
onto elite-level political conflict. We begin by considering how citizens who identify with the
left and right in American politics differ psychologically with respect to their stable traits, and
how these personality differences should shape interpretation and responses to ethnic change.
Personality Differences in American Politics
Recent research converges on the proposition that citizens identifying with the left and
right in American politics differ with respect to their relative aversion or attraction to epistemic
uncertainty and novelty. The idea is that conservatism, in its emphasis on institutional stability,
is palliative for individuals who find uncertainty and change aversive, as it lends stability and
predictability to one’s social environment. In contrast, liberalism’s emphasis on institutional
change and diversity is appealing to citizens who are comfortable with uncertainty, and who seek
out novelty and new experiences (Jost et al. 2003; Jost, Federico and Napier 2009). In political
science, supportive evidence comes from studies of the “Big Five” personality traits (Carney et
al. 2008; Gerber et al. 2010; Mondak 2010; Mondak and Halperin 2008). Such work suggests
that, of these five traits, “openness to experience” and “conscientiousness” most reliably
distinguish the political right from the left. As Mondak (2010) explains, “the openness and
conscientiousness hypotheses are best understood in terms of traditional views in which
liberalism corresponds with a willingness to see government tackle new and varied problems,
7
while conservatism implies a more cautious approach in which presumption favors the status
quo” (p. 127). As Gerber et al. (2010) explain, openness to experience corresponds with a
general attraction to novelty, while conscientiousness is associated with rule and normfollowing, and “socially prescribed impulse control’ (p. 115; see also Carney et al. 2008).
This work largely converges with other recent research in psychology proper. Jost et al.
(2003) report the results of a meta-analysis of over eighty studies, and find that conservative
political orientations are strongly associated with several indicators related to epistemic needs for
certainty, such as “intolerance of ambiguity” (Frenkel-Brunswik 1949). Federico and Goren
(2009) find that an aversion to uncertainty is associated with conservative self-identifications.
Hetherington and Weiler (2009) find that needs for order and certainty constitute a highly
influential basis for party identification in American politics since at least 2004.
Overall, this body of work suggests that left and right orientations in contemporary
American mass politics can be distinguished in terms of relative attraction or aversion to
epistemic uncertainty, and thus a general dislike or preference for novelty and change.
Implications for Responses to Ethnic Change
The psychological divide between the left and right in the American mass public is
important as it implies the potential for differential responses to immigration-driven ethnic
change. At its most basic level, immigration engenders intercultural contact. Such contact can
lead to a process of large-scale cultural change labeled acculturation (Redfield, Linton, and
Herskovits 1936; Castro 2003), where the original cultural patterns of either or both groups
become permanently altered by the transmission and fusion of culture. When triggered by
immigration, the process of acculturation can be characterized by the displacement of the ethno-
8
cultural status quo of the host community and the emergence of a more ethnically and culturally
diverse sociocultural landscape.
Psychological research on acculturation focuses on how individuals residing within
environments undergoing cultural change adapt to the over-time dislocation and replacement of
their habituated ethnic context. According to this literature, adaptation to one’s environment
involves both psychological and sociocultural components, with the former pertaining to feelings
of belonging to one’s community, social trust, and satisfaction with life (Berry and Sam 1997;
LaFromboise, Coleman, and Gerton 1993), and the later pertaining to the ability to effectively
interact and communicate with cultural outgroups (i.e., sociocultural competence) (Castro 2003;
La Fromboise et al. 1993; Ward and Rana-Deuba 1999). The acculturation literature contends
that individuals are susceptible to the experience of “culture shock” (Furnham and Bochner
1986; Oberg 1960) or “acculturative stress” (Berry 1970; Berry 1997) as their habituated
environment changes and they (potentially) fail to adapt to heightened levels of ethnic and
cultural diversity.
When brought together, we believe that the research on personality and politics and the
psychological research on acculturation hold an important implication for the politics of
immigration and ethnic change. Namely, these works suggest that the politically relevant
personality traits underlying the left-right divide will be relevant for the politics of immigration
because they will shape how individuals adapt to residing in environments undergoing
acculturation. The reactions of primary theoretical concern revolve around the feelings and
perceptions of cultural threat in response to immigration, which should be highly politically
consequential given that cultural threat is a pre-potent source of citizens’ immigration policy
9
preferences (Citrin et al. 1997; Espenshade and Calhoun 1993; Ha 2008; Hood and Morris 1997;
Sides and Citrin 2007; Sniderman et al. 2004).
The personality and acculturation frameworks suggest openness to, and indeed affinity
for, novelty and change, should lead citizens to find immigration-driven sociocultural changes
less culturally threatening and should thus engender positive adaptation to ethnic change and
heightened diversity. In contrast, dispositions associated with aversion to ambiguity and
uncertainty and a corresponding desire for stability and predictability in one’s social environment
should lead citizens to find ethnic changes aversive, thus fixating on the displacement of the
sociocultural status quo and negative adaptation to ethnic change. Indeed, extant research on
ethnic change argues that one principle consequence of the influx of ethnic minorities for white
residents, especially those who reside in previously white dominated areas, is that it creates
uncertainty about the identity and future of one’s community (Green, Strolovitch, and Wong
1998). In sum, we offer the differential adaptation hypothesis:
(H1) Ethnic change and citizen personality will interact to predict perceived cultural
threat from immigrants such that citizens low in needs for certainty will become
less culturally threatened by immigration as a function of ethnic change, while
those high in such needs will become more culturally threatened.
Furthermore, we argue that differential adaptation by personality should impact policy
preferences indirectly through cultural threat perceptions. To be sure, while our theoretical
approach departs from theories of racial or power threat by focusing on changes in the ethnic
composition of citizens’ environment as the principle feature of ethnic context driving opinion,
we take a cue from these theories by focusing on threat as a perceptual intermediary between
citizens’ context and their policy preferences. Applying this standing theoretical logic to our
10
theory, we offer the following second prediction concerning policy preferences over
immigration:
(H2) Ethnic change induced polarization of perceived cultural threat by personality will
mediate polarization of support for restrictive immigration policies, such that
citizens low in needs for certainty will become less supportive of restrictive policies,
while those high in such needs will become more supportive.
Finally, we consider theoretically and empirically the broader implications of these
dynamics, and argue that personality-driven partisan and ideological sorting in contemporary
U.S. politics, combined with hypotheses one and two, entails exacerbated partisan and
ideological polarization over immigration as a function of continuing ethnic change. If correct,
then the influx of immigrant populations into the United States, rather than leading to
convergence of opinion over the correct approaches to dealing with this issue, will further divide
the public along already existing lines of political conflict. Such polarization incentivizes
politicians to move to the extremes to score political points with core constituencies, forcing out
pragmatic approaches and solutions, and thus lowering the probability of genuine bipartisanship
and compromise across party lines, even as these issues increase in importance as a function of
such change. We represent our model and its potential political implications graphically in
Figure 1.
To test our hypotheses regarding differential adaptation and polarization we rely upon
secondary analysis of nationally representative survey data and analysis of an original national
survey experiment. We address these studies in turn.
11
Figure 1. Connecting Personality Processes to Polarization
Epistemic
Needs
+
+
+
RightWing
Affiliation
Ethnic
Change
Perceived
Threat
+
+
(Induced
Polarization)
AntiImmigrant
Policy
Prefs
Notes: The dashed, two-headed arrow is intended to represent an induced bivariate association
between political orientations and immigration policy preferences (i.e. “partisan polarization”),
not the residual covariance of these constructs within the context of the structural model.
12
STUDY 1
Data
Our first study relies upon the 2006 United States Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy
Survey, conducted for the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University by
International Communications Research (Howard, Gibson and Stolle 2005). The overall survey
consists of approximately 1,000 interviews collected door-to-door using a cluster sample design
intended to represent the adult population residing in occupied residential housing units.
Respondents were matched to county-level context data (e.g. change in the Hispanic population)
which we describe further below. In keeping with prior opinion research on immigration (e.g.
Brader, Valentino, and Suhay 2008; Campbell et al. 2006; Citrin et al. 1990), the present analysis
restricts its focus to N=905 non-Hispanic respondents in the survey.
Measures
Perceived Cultural Threat. In line with our theory, we expect ethnic change to influence
perceptions of the cultural threat posed by immigrants. To measure individual perceptions of
cultural threat, this analysis relied upon an item in the CID tapping whether respondents believe
that “America’s cultural life is undermined or enriched by people coming to live here from other
countries.” This item is comparable to measures of cultural threat in leading opinion research
(e.g., Citrin et al. 1997; Sniderman et al. 2004). This item has 11 response options, ranging from
0 (“cultural life undermined”) to 10 (“cultural life enriched”), and was recoded to range from 0
to 1 with higher values indicating greater perceived threat.
Objective change in local immigrant population. We measure the objective change in the
immigrant population of the respondent’s environment as the percentage change in the Hispanic
13
population in the respondent’s county of residence.1 Drawing upon data from the U.S. Census
Bureau, we obtained the percent Hispanic in each respondent’s county of residence in 1990 and
2000. To obtain the measure of change in this population in each county, we subtracted the
percentage of the county population which was Hispanic in 1990 from the percentage in 2000.2
The usage of a 10 year time frame is consistent with extant research analyzing the effects of
ethnic change on opinion and behavior (Alexseev 2006; Citrin et al. 1990; Green et al. 1998;
Hopkins 2010).
Personality. To measure uncertainty aversion, we rely on two items measuring
respondents’ levels of authoritarianism (r=.48). Both items asked respondents how much they
agree or disagree with a specific statement (5-points, from “Strongly agree” to “Strongly
disagree”). The first statement read, “What young people need most of all is strict discipline by
their parents.” The second statement read, “In preparing children for life, it is extremely
important that they learn to be obedient.” In recent work, scholars have theorized that
authoritarian attitudes and behaviors are derivative of more basic psychological needs for a wellordered and predictable environment (e.g. Duckitt 2001; Feldman 2003; Hetherington and
Weiler 2009; Jost et al. 2003; Stenner 2005). In a meta-analysis of over 80 previous studies, Jost
et al. (2003) find strong associations between epistemic needs and authoritarianism (see also
Hetherington and Weiler 2009; Van Hiel, Pandelaere and Duriez 2004).In addition to their
similarity to recent operationalizations of the construct (see, e.g., Hetherington and Suhay 2011;
1
We use the Hispanic population as the selected immigrant group to test our theory because Hispanics are the
largest (Passel, Cohn, Lopez 2011) and arguably most salient immigrant group (Domke et al. 1999). Further, this
decision is consistent with extant opinion research on immigration (Burns and Gimpel 2000; Citrin, Reingold, and
Green 1990; Hood and Morris 1997; Rocha and Espino 2009; Stein, Post, and Rinden 2000),
2
One limitation of this measure is that the time period under which change is being observed goes from 1990 to
2000 rather than to 2006, which is the year in which our survey data was collected. This operationalization of
county-level change is due to limitations in data availability, as the annual American Community Surveys (ACS)
taken in between the Decennial Censuses, such as the 2006 ACS, do not have foreign born data available for many
counties across the nation with smaller population sizes. In order to obtain data for each county in our data, we were
restricted to usage of the 1990 and 2000 Decennial Censuses.
14
Hetherington and Weiler 2009), these items should distinguish respondents on the basis of
epistemic needs. Each item considers potential solutions to dealing with a dangerous or
uncertain world, more specifically, by adhering to established norms, rules and institutions, and
respecting legitimate authorities. As Duckitt (2001) argues, “A view of the world as dangerous,
unpredictable, and threatening…would activate the motivational goal of social control and
security. This motivational goal would be expressed in the collectivist sociocultural values of
conformity and traditionalism and in…authoritarian social attitudes” (p. 50).
Controls. We control for three additional indicators measured at the county-level. To
account for the predictions of power and economic threat hypotheses, we control for levels of
immigrants as the percent Hispanic of the county population in 2000, as well as data from the
U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics to obtain the unemployment rate within
each county in 2005. Finally, we control for the political culture of citizens’ counties of
residence with a variable measuring the proportion of the vote won by George W. Bush in each
county in the 2004 Presidential Election. This latter variable has been identified as a relevant
factor shaping opinion on policies concerning racial and ethnic minorities (Campbell et al. 2006).
At the individual level, we control for several additional factors, including age, gender, black
self-identification, educational attainment, income, nationalism, personal economic
retrospections, whether the respondent has friends and/or family members who are immigrants,
birth in the U.S., employment status, partisanship (higher values = more Republican), and
ideology (higher values = more conservative). All variables were recoded to range from zero to
one prior to analysis.
15
Analysis
We estimate the following regression for perceived cultural threat (Y) via restricted
maximum likelihood:
13
𝑦𝑖𝑗 = 𝛽0𝑗 + 𝛽1𝑗 𝐴𝑈𝑇𝐻𝑖𝑗 + ∑ 𝛽𝑘 𝐶𝑂𝑁𝑇𝑅𝑂𝐿𝑘𝑖𝑗 + 𝜀𝑖𝑗 ; 𝜀𝑖𝑗 ~𝑁(0, 𝜎12 )
𝑘=2
𝛽0𝑗 = 𝛾00 + 𝛾01 ∆𝐻𝐼𝑆𝑃𝑗 + 𝛾02 %𝐻𝐼𝑆𝑃𝑗 + 𝛾03 𝐵𝑈𝑆𝐻𝑗 + 𝛾04 %𝑈𝑁𝐸𝑀𝑃𝑗 + 𝛿0𝑗 ; 𝛿0𝑗 ~𝑁(0, 𝜎22 )
𝛽1𝑗 = 𝛾10 + 𝛾11 ∆𝐻𝐼𝑆𝑃𝑗 + 𝛾12 %𝐻𝐼𝑆𝑃𝑗 + 𝛿1𝑗 ; 𝛿1𝑗 ~𝑁(0, 𝜎32 )
In this model both the intercept of the individual-level equation and the marginal effect of
authoritarianism are modeled as a function of county-level predictors and normally distributed,
random disturbances. With respect to the marginal effect of authoritarianism, we can think of
this specification in terms of two cross-level interactions, one with the change in the county-level
Hispanic population from 1990 to 2000, and one with the percent Hispanic at the county level in
2000. We include the latter as a control to ensure that the dynamic we observe is due to change
per se, and not simply the overall percentage of Hispanics in a given county. We expect a
negative and significant coefficient on the Hispanic change variable (𝛾01 ), indicating that at low
levels of authoritarianism change in the ethnic composition of one’s social environment
decreases perceptions of cultural threat. Conversely, we expect a large and positive interaction
term between change and authoritarianism (𝛾11) such that |𝛾11 | > |𝛾01 |, indicating that at high
levels of authoritarianism, ethnic change entails an increase in perceptions of cultural threat.
These dynamics are conceptually equivalent to polarization of threat by personality as a function
of ethnic change.
16
Figure 2A. Perceived Cultural Threat and Ethnic Change
High Authoritarianism
.25
.3
.35
.4
.45
.5
Low Authoritarianism
0
.2
.4
.6
.8
Change in % Hispanic, 1990 to 2000
Notes: Estimates are restricted to values of Hispanic change ranging from its 5th to its 95th percentile
Figure 2B. Regression Results for Perceived Cultural Threat
Change Hispanic
Change X Auth
Hispanic Levels
Levels X Auth
Authoritarianism
Bush Vote
% Unemployed
Education
Income
Male
Age
Black
Nationalism
Pocketbook
Immigrants F&F
Born in U.S.
Unemployed
Partisanship
Ideology
Intercept
Ni=827, Nj=106, s_1^2=.04, s_2^2=.00, s_3^2=.01
-.5
-.25
0
.25
.5
.75
Beta
Notes: Data from 2006 CID. Dots are restricted ML estimates. Extended lines are 95% confidence bounds
17
Results
The estimates for this model are shown in the first column of Panel B of Figure 2 with
their associated 95% confidence bounds. They show strong support for theoretical expectations.
With respect to significance tests of our key directional hypotheses, we utilize one-tailed tests.
First, the coefficient for change in the county-level Hispanic population from 1990-2000 is in the
expected negative direction and statistically significant (𝛾̂01=-.28, p<.05). In addition, as
expected, the coefficient for the interaction of change with authoritarianism is positive, larger in
absolute value than the coefficient for change, and statistically significant (𝛾̂11=.49, p<.05),
indicating a reversal in direction of the effect of Hispanic change from negative to positive as
authoritarianism increases from low to high.
To better interpret the substance of these results, we generated predicted values of
perceived cultural threat as a function of Hispanic change and authoritarianism in Panel A of
Figure 2. The black line represents the predicted values of threat, moving from the 5th to the 95th
percentile of Hispanic change, for citizens at the 5th percentile of authoritarianism. The grey line
represents the predicted values for citizens at the 95th percentile of authoritarianism. This graph
illustrates nicely the theorized conditional relationship between ethnic change and perceived
threat. For citizens low in authoritarianism, and thus open to change, uncertainty and novelty,
changes in the ethnic composition of one’s county entail a decrease in the perception that
immigrants pose a cultural threat to the United States. Conversely, at high levels of
authoritarianism, and thus for citizens averse to uncertainty and novelty, changes in ethnic
composition entail an increase in the perception that immigrants pose a cultural threat.
We will additionally comment briefly on the estimates for the model’s control variables.
With respect to Hispanic population levels in 2000, we find no evidence of an interaction, but
18
some suggestion that levels may have an influence on the attitudes of low authoritarians. At the
lowest levels of authoritarianism, increases in the percentage Hispanic at the county-level in
2000 are associated with decreased perceptions of cultural threat (p<.10, two-tailed). For every
additional 10% of the county-level population that is Hispanic, we predict a decline in perceived
cultural threat among low authoritarians of about four percentage points. The political context,
operationalized as the percent voting for Bush in 2004, had no influence on threat, while the
unemployment rate had a positive effect, but did not attain conventional levels of statistical
significance. With respect to individual-level controls, education matters a great deal. Moving
from the lowest to the highest levels of educational attainment entails a decrease in perceived
cultural threat of about 17 percentage points. Males were about 3 points more threatened than
females on average, Black citizens were about 5 points more threatened than other groups, and
conservatives were about 7 points more threatened. Finally, citizens who perceive their own
financial situation to be tenuous were more likely to feel that immigrants threaten American
culture. As seen in Figure 1, however, the strongest determinant of perceptions of threat are real
changes in the ethnic composition of the local environment, but in distinct ways conditional on
the personality traits of citizens themselves.
The Potential for Bias Due to Selection
We turn now to a brief consideration of the well-known problem of selection bias, or in
other words, the possibility that respondents select into geographical areas on the basis of the
presumed causal variable as a function of their attitudes or political dispositions. In our case, this
would entail citizens selecting into counties whose demographic profile with respect to ethnicity
fits with their dispositional levels of perceived cultural threat. While we address the issue of
19
causality rigorously through a survey experiment (described further below), we believe there are
reasons to reject the selection bias story in the present case.
While we do not deny that citizens may select into environments on the basis of attitudes
and traits which may be relevant to the immigration attitudes examined herein, we believe that
our hypothesized dynamic of interest, namely, the interactive effects of ethnic change with
personality, should be less subject to claims of selection-induced spuriousness. To see why,
consider the logic of the selection bias argument. This argument would claim that citizens select
into geographic regions as an interactive function of both the region’s level of expected and/or
ongoing ethnic change and the citizen’s own traits and attitudes. Thus, citizens who are most
negative toward immigrants would select into relatively homogenous regions, and those most
positive would select into regions with greater extant or expected diversity. But our hypothesis
is not a simple direct effect of change on attitudes, but rather a conditional one. Specifically, we
expect the impact of ethnic change to be exactly opposite across personality orientations, with
those low in needs for epistemic certainty becoming more positive and vice versa.
While the selection bias argument could potentially hold water for the former hypothesis,
it simply fails for the latter. Specifically, for the selection argument to work, one would have to
posit that those with personality traits and attitudes most averse to such social uncertainty would
be most likely to move to regions undergoing substantial change. This makes little sense. Thus,
while we cannot rule out the possibility of these selection biases in one of the two cases,
confirmation of our hypothesis for citizens with high needs for certainty in their social and
cultural environs speaks strongly in favor of our causal model.
20
STUDY 2
While Study 1 provided evidence strongly consistent with theoretical expectations, we
cannot entirely rule out the possibility that these effects are due to selection. In Study 2, we
replicate our findings above with a survey experiment which manipulates perceptions of ethnic
change, and thus rules out the possibility of selection through random assignment. In addition,
we utilized Study 2 as an opportunity to include a more direct measure of aversion to
uncertainty.
Data
The data for our second study consist of 441 valid responses collected through
Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk interface. The procedure for obtaining these data are outlined in
Appendix A. Political and demographic summary statistics are also reported in Appendix A.
Recent research suggests that, while imperfect, samples obtained through Mechanical Turk are
similar in their demographic and political characteristics to those of nationally representative
samples, and are superior to more common methods of collecting convenience samples while
remaining economical (Berinsky, Huber and Lenz 2012). Given that the influence of personality
on information processing and judgment should be a general process, we expect this sample to be
generalizable to the broader population.
Experimental Design
This survey experiment was intended to provide additional support for the causal
mechanism advanced in our theory by directly manipulating perceptions of ethnic change, as
opposed to relying on the assumption of experienced ethnic change within a given geographic
region, thus eliminating the possibility of selection effects. To this end, respondents were
randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions. In all three conditions, respondents
21
first completed a survey of their demographic profile, political affiliations, and relevant
personality traits. In the control condition, respondents then completed a survey of preferences
over several public policy issues, within which were embedded two questions concerning the
respondents’ perception of the threat to American culture posed by immigrants. In the two
treatment conditions (moderate and extreme ethnic change, respectively), before moving on to an
identical policy survey, respondents were asked to read a mock newspaper article3 concerning
the recent increases in the Hispanic population in “most parts of the country in recent years.” In
the moderate change condition, the article informed respondents that several “typical” American
cities had experienced changes in percent Hispanic from about 5% to about 10% from 2000 to
2010. The article also stated that the percentage of restaurants owned by Hispanics had
increased from about 4% to about 9% over this same time period. In the extreme change
condition, these values were 5% to 30%, and 4% to 19%, respectively. In both conditions the
article included a graph displaying the change in the Hispanic population from 2000 to 2010.
Both articles also discussed how these changes have implications for local culture. Finally, both
conditions contained identical statements at the end of the articles from “residents” of one of the
typical cities highlighted in the article. The first resident expressed the opinion that ethnic
change has had positive effects on the local culture, while the other resident expressed the
opinion that change has had negative effects. These two statements were intended to represent
two potential interpretations of the implications of ethnic change with respect to local culture,
and for uncertainty in one’s social environment. As we will show empirically below, this allows
for a more direct test of the “resonance” of different interpretations of the same levels of change
with different personality profiles. The full text of the moderate change article is presented in
3
Respondents were told this was a recent article from a major national newspaper, and were debriefed with respect
to the true purpose and design of the experiment at the end.
22
Appendix B. Following the article, respondents in both conditions responded to three questions
concerning their agreement with the two speakers, and then continued on to the same survey as
the control condition. All survey items in the post-treatment segment of the study were
randomized with respect to order.
Measures
Personality. We measure aversion to epistemic uncertainty via ten items from the Need
for Nonspecific Cognitive Closure scale (Kruglanski and Webster 1996; Kruglanski, Webster
and Klem 1993). In addition to its use as a key indicator of the more general personality
dimension underlying current ideological conflict in the United States (see Jost et al.
2003;Federico and Goren 2009), the need for closure is highly relevant to our theoretical
expectations concerning citizens’ relative comfort with, or aversion to, uncertainty generally, and
thus to substantial changes in their social environment. As Jost et al. (2003) argue, “contents that
promise or support epistemic stability, clarity, order, and uniformity should be preferred by highneed-for-closure persons over contents that promise their epistemic opposites (i.e. instability,
ambiguity, chaos, and diversity)” (p. 348). The need for closure (hereafter NFC) was measured
with ten items which are presented in Appendix C (e.g. “I dislike unpredictable situations), and
formed a highly reliable scale (α=.82).
Perceived Cultural Threat. We measured respondents’ perceptions of cultural threat from
immigrants with two items. The first read, “Would you say that America’s cultural life is
generally undermined or enriched by people coming to live here from other countries?”
Responses were recorded on a six-point scale from “Undermined a great deal” to “Enriched a
great deal.” The second item read, “To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following
statement: “These days, I am afraid the American culture is undermined by immigration.”
23
Responses were again recorded on a six-point scale (“Agree strongly” to “Disagree
strongly”).4The two items were highly correlated (r=-.68) and were thus combined into a single
scale.
Controls. We control for several additional variables in our analysis, including personal
and sociotropic economic retrospections, age, gender, Black self-identification, educational
attainment, income, employment status, religiosity (average of attendance and importance),
partisanship (higher values = more Republican), and ideology (higher values = more
conservative).
Agreement with Residents. Finally, in the two treatment conditions, respondents were
asked three questions regarding their agreement and disagreement with the diverging
interpretations of the two “residents” in the mock article. The first two were six-point agreedisagree scales (as above), one for each of the two residents. The third asked respondents which
interpretation they preferred if they “had to choose.” We examine responses to these items after
our initial analysis below.
All variables were recoded from zero to one prior to analysis.
Analysis
We test our key hypothesis with an OLS regression of perceived cultural threat on NFC,
two dummy variables representing the two ethnic change treatment conditions (with control
group excluded), the interaction of the dummies with personality, and all controls. In line with
theory, and consistent with the results from Study 1, we expect negative and significant
constituent terms on the treatment dummies, indicating that induced perceptions of ethnic change
decrease perceived cultural threat for citizens low in epistemic needs for certainty. Conversely,
4
The first item was adapted from the 2006 CID, and the second was adapted from a similar item used in Sniderman
et al. (2004).
24
we expect positive and significant interaction terms, indicating that perceived ethnic change
increases cultural threat for citizens high in these needs (with the absolute magnitude of the
interaction term larger than that of the respective constituent term). Our analysis again excludes
self-identified Hispanic respondents.
Results
The estimates for this model are shown in Figure 3A. We again utilize one-tailed
significance tests for our key directional hypotheses. First, as expected, both the moderate and
extreme treatment constituent terms are in the negative direction, although only the moderate
change term achieves statistical significance (B=-.19, p<.05). We will discuss this asymmetry
further below. Second, the interactions of the two treatment conditions with NFC are also in the
expected, positive direction, and of a substantial magnitude, again indicating a reversal of the
influence of perceived ethnic change conditional on citizen personality. As with the treatment
constituent terms, the interaction of moderate change with NFC is statistically significant (B=.32,
p<.05), while the interaction with extreme change is smaller and not significantly different from
either zero or the moderate interaction term. Overall, the pattern of estimates is supportive of
theoretical expectations, and converges with the patterns observed in the cross-sectional data
above. As ethnic change in the current context is manipulated, we can also be confident that our
causal interpretation of the patterns is warranted.
With respect to relative inefficiency of the estimates for the extreme condition, we can
only speculate. A potential explanation for this result is that the extent of the change specified in
the extreme condition was too extreme, and some respondents realized the deception. This
would explain the fact that the extreme manipulation induced the expected dynamics, but the
25
effects were of a smaller magnitude, and contained greater uncertainty. Essentially, a portion of
the respondents simply ignored this information as unreliable.
Figure 3A. Regression Results, Mechanical Turk Experiment
Moderate Change Condition
Extreme Change Condition
NFC x Moderate
NFC x Extreme
Need for Closure
Age
Male
Black
Born in U.S.
Education
Income
Unemployed
Religiosity
Personal Retros
Sociotropic Retros
Partisanship
Ideology
Intercept
N=441, R2=.23
-.4
-.2
0
Beta
.2
.4
.6
Notes: Dots are OLS estimates. Extended lines are 95% confidence bounds
Figure 3B. Conditional Effects of Manipulated Ethnic Change
High NFC
.2
.3
.4
.5
Low NFC
Control
Moderate Ethnic Change
Experimental Condition
Notes: All control variables held at central tendecies. Low NFC=5%, High NFC=95%
26
To better interpret the substance of these results, we generated predicted values of
perceived cultural threat, across the control and moderate treatment conditions, varying NFC
from its 5th to its 95th percentile, and holding all controls at their central tendencies. These
estimates are shown in Figure 3B. The pattern of estimates is strikingly similar to the crosssectional results of Study 1. At low levels of NFC, respondents in the moderate and merged
treatment conditions are about 12 percentage points less threatened culturally than their
counterparts in the control condition. Conversely, at high levels of NFC, respondents in the two
treatment groups are about 5 percentage points more threatened than similar control respondents.
Looking at the interaction in terms of polarization by personality, in the control condition there is
only a 5 percentage point gap in perceived cultural threat across levels of NFC. In the moderate
ethnic change condition, by contrast, this gap increases to a substantial 22 percentage points.
Finally, as discussed several times above, we understand the influence of personality as
emerging from differential interpretations of the implications of ethnic change for local culture.
We thus expect those high in needs for epistemic certainty to interpret change as a threat in its
capacity to alter the socio-cultural landscape. Conversely, we expect those low in such needs,
who tend to be attracted to novelty, to be attentive to the ways in which ethnic change enhances
local culture through increases in diversity, experience and choice. Consistent with these ideas,
we examined the influence of NFC on relative and absolute agreement with the opinions of the
two “speakers” at the end of the article viewed in both treatment conditions. The first two items
following the article asked about agreement with the position of each speaker. We combined
these into a single scale (r=-.77), recoded from zero to one. The third item asked respondents
which position they most agreed with “if they had to choose.”
27
We estimated an OLS regression of relative preference for the speaker who expressed
apprehension about the influence of ethnic change on personality and all controls. The influence
of NFC was strong and statistically significant. A change from the 5th to the 95th percentile of
NFC was associated with an increase in agreement with the concerned speaker of 14 percentage
points (SE=.04). We then estimated a probit regression of the choice variable on the same set of
independent variables. Again, the influence of NFC on agreement is quite strong. A change
from the 5th to 95th percentile entails a 28 point increase in the probability of agreement with the
concerned speaker (SE=.09). We again interpret these results as consistent with the notion that
different ways of interpreting ethnic change differentially “resonate” with personality in
predictable, and politically consequential, ways.
IMPLICATIONS FOR MASS POLARIZATION AND ELITE CONFLICT
As argued in the introduction, our model implies that the interaction of personality and
ethnic change generates polarization of support for restrictive immigration policy through
changes in perceived cultural threat, and that these dynamics ultimately suggest increased
partisan conflict over immigration (see Figure 1).In this final section, we address these dynamics
empirically.
Implications for Polarization of Preferences on Immigration Policy
In addition to perceived cultural threat, we included three additional items in our survey
experiment to measure immigration-related policy preferences. The first item asked, “Do you
think the number of immigrants from foreign countries who are permitted to come to the United
States to live should be increased a lot, increased a little, left the same as it is now, decreased a
little, or decreased a lot?” The second asked, “Thinking about immigrants who are currently
living in the U.S. illegally, should the U.S. Government require these immigrants to go home, or
28
should the Government grant these immigrants some kind of legal status that allows them to stay
here?” The third asked, “How likely would you be to support a state or local law declaring
English as the Official Language?” Responses ranged from 1 (“Extremely likely”) to 6
(“Extremely unlikely”). The three formed a relatively reliable scale (α=.68) and were averaged
such that higher values indicate greater opposition to immigration (the scale ranges from zero to
one).
We estimated a structural equation model linking epistemic needs to immigration
opposition, through perceived cultural threat, conditional on treatment condition. In other words,
we regressed (1) threat on NFC and all controls, and (2) policy preferences on threat, NFC, and
all controls, simultaneously. We estimated a multiple groups model to allow these estimates to
vary across experimental conditions (the equivalent of interactions). Given the uncertainty
regarding the extreme change condition discussed above, we focus here on moderate change
only.
This model was estimated via maximum likelihood, and the key results are displayed
graphically in Figure 5. All variables are again coded on a zero to one scale. The first two rows
show the direct effects of perceived cultural threat and the need for closure on policy preferences
for the control and ethnic change conditions, respectively. With respect to the influence of
cultural threat, our work strongly converges with past work. A change in threat from low to high
is associated with a change in policy conservatism of about 70 percentage points. Conversely,
there is no direct effect of epistemic needs on policy preferences in either condition. Instead, as
theorized and represented in Figure 1, the influence of needs on preferences works indirectly
through perceived cultural threat, conditional on the presence of ethnic change. As above, the
gap between citizens high and low in the need for closure is small and insignificant (.11) in the
29
control condition, but very large and statistically significant in the ethnic change condition (.40,
p<.05). This dynamic translated into conditional polarization of policy preferences by epistemic
needs through threat. The last row of Figure 5 shows the estimated indirect effects of the need
for closure on policy preferences across conditions. In the control condition this effect is
minimal and insignificant (.07), while in the ethnic change condition it is strong and significant
(.28, p<.05). Again, the implication of these dynamics is exacerbated polarization of political
groups on the issue of immigration, and thus the potential for increased polarization at the elitelevel as a function of these “bottom-up” processes.
Figure 5. SEM Results for Ethnic Change and Policy Preferences
Control
Moderate Ethnic Change
Threat on Policy
NFC on Policy (Direct)
NFC on Threat
NFC on Policy (Indirect)
-.5
0
.5
1
-.5
0
.5
1
Beta
Notes: Data from MTurk experiment. Dots are ML estimates. Extended lines are 95% confidence bounds
30
Personality and Partisan and Ideological Sorting
As we stated in the introduction, we pursue individual-level heterogeneity in responses to
ethnic change with a practical purpose, namely, to understand the potential implications for the
politics of immigration in the United States. While one could, perhaps, posit a large number of
individual differences which structure responses to contextual factors, these will be more or less
politically influential to the extent that they map onto critical divisions at the elite level. Perhaps
the most important question concerns the extent to which these differences map onto partisan and
ideological divisions, and thus have the potential to affect the behavior of partisan elites. In this
final empirical section, we provide evidence that these personality traits strongly structure
partisan and ideological sorting in contemporary American politics, results which converge with
much recent research in political psychology.
First, in the 2006 CID data, we estimated ordered probit models of partisan and
ideological affiliation (trichotomized into “left,” “center,” and “right”) as a function of
authoritarianism and all controls.5 For both partisanship and ideology, authoritarianism exerts a
strong and substantively significant influence on the probability of identifying with the right
wing in American politics (.95 and 1.22, ps<.05, respectively). At the 5th percentile of
authoritarianism, the probability of identifying as a Democrat is estimated to be .64, while the
probability of identifying as a Republican is only .23, all else equal. Conversely, at the 95th
percentile of this personality variable, the probability of identifying as a Democrat is .41, while
the probability of identifying as a Republican is .44. The effects on ideological orientations are
even larger. The estimated probabilities of liberal and conservative orientations at low
5
We utilize the non-Hispanic sample for these analyses.
31
authoritarianism are .41 and .29, respectively. At high levels of this trait, these probabilities are
.16 and .58.
Our own data largely converges with the results from the 2006 CID. For both
partisanship and ideology, again estimating ordered probits with controls, NFC exerts a strong
and significant influence on the probability of right-wing identification (.61 and .88, ps<.05,
respectively).A change from low to high NFC corresponds with a change in the probability of
Democratic identification from .64 to .51, and a change in the probability of Republican
identification from .21to .32. For ideology, the effects are substantially larger. At low levels of
NFC, the probabilities of Liberal and Conservative identification, respectively, are .64 and .18.
At high levels of NFC, these probabilities are .45 and .33.6 Thus, both datasets converge with
other recent work which identifies traits related to epistemic needs for certainty as critical to
understanding contemporary partisan and ideological orientations. Given this underlying
psychological structure to political divisions, ethnic change should be expected to exacerbate
both mass and elite level conflict over immigration.
CONCLUSION
Summary of Findings
The present research has considered the interactive role of personality and context on
citizens’ perceptions of the cultural threat posed by immigrants. Utilizing a multi-method
approach (both observational and experimental), we have provided strong evidence that the
influence of ethnic change on perceived threat is strong, but conditional. More specifically,
ethnic change increases perceived threat for citizens with dispositional needs for epistemic
certainty, and decreases perceived threat for citizens open to novelty and uncertainty. We find
6
Recall, in the context of both the partisanship and ideology analyses, that Mechanical Turk respondents show
higher average probabilities of identifying with Democrats and Liberals than a random sample of U.S. citizens (see
Appendix).
32
an identical dynamic across two studies, the first examining nationally representative data and
real changes in the ethnic composition of respondents’ environments, and the second
manipulating perceptions of ethnic change via random assignment. The convergence of the two
studies speaks strongly in favor of our theorized, interactive approach to immigration opinion.
The present paper thus offers a novel perspective on how the public forms its preferences
over immigration policy. While past research has focused either on “dispositional” variables (e.g.
affective orientations toward immigrant groups) or contextual factors (e.g. out-group levels in
one’s environment), no work to our knowledge has attempted to understand how the stable traits
of citizens shape their attention and reaction to real changes in the ethnic composition of their
environments, and how the interaction of these dispositional and contextual factors shape
politically relevant attitudes.
In this sense, we offer a framework which is truly “political-psychological” in its
orientation, viewing citizen and context as inextricable. This view contrasts both with recent
work on contextual influences on citizen preferences, as well as work in political psychology on
the influence of personality. The former has largely ignored individual differences in how
context influences political attitudes, while the latter has interpreted the influence of personality
on preferences as causally “direct.” Our framework is distinct. We understand personality
through a social cognitive lens (see, e.g., Cervone and Shoda 1999; Mischel and Shoda 1995), or
in other words, as a stable force which shapes citizens’ judgments by influencing their selection
and interpretation of information in the political environment. In the present context, we have
argued that traits related to psychological needs for certainty influence how different aspects of
ethnic change will “resonate” with citizens. While those comfortable with uncertainty may
actually seek out the cultural diversity implied by ethnic change, those averse to uncertainty will
33
interpret their changing cultural milieu as threatening to the stable environment which they
cherish. In this sense, we should view personality’s role for politics as a mediating one,
translating the political environment into political opinions by shaping perceptions, feelings and
inferences (Mischel and Shoda 1995).
The political world impinging on the average citizen is a dynamic one, and our
theoretical vision of how dispositional factors interact with this environment must be able to
accommodate such dynamism. Given the rapidly changing ethnic environment in many parts of
the United States, this is of particular importance to the literature on immigration politics. The
present paper is one step in this direction.
34
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APPENDIX A. DETAILS FOR MECHANICAL TURK EXPERIMENT
Mechanical Turk is a service that Amazon.com provides to those who are interested in
the performance of a large number of small tasks that require human judgment. Individuals
performing the tasks create a user profile on the site and are paid a fee for their services that
varies depending on the time, effort, and expertise involved in the task. Researchers post a
human intelligence task (HIT) to the Amazon site and offer payment rate per HIT. A link to our
survey was posted on this site, and advertised under the keywords “politics,” “survey,” and
“public policy.” The description of the task read, “You will be asked to answer several questions
about yourself and respond to a short newspaper article.” Valid completions of the survey were
compensated $.50. The effective hourly rate was estimated to be $3.66. The data were culled to
remove all respondents completing the survey multiple times, leaving a total of 441 valid
completions. Summary statistics for these respondents are shown below.
Median Age
Male
Black
White
Mean Political Interest (1-5)
Mean Subjective Political Knowledge (1-5)
Mean Partisanship (1-7, higher=Rep)
Mean Ideology (1-7, higher=Con)
Mean Importance of Religion to Self (1-5)
Median Income
Mean Income
Median Education
Unemployed or Temporarily Laid Off
Student
Working Now
Central Tendencies and %s
28
55%
5%
83%
3.32
3.17
3.40
3.34
2.27
20K-30K
30K-40K
Post-HS Degree
19%
18%
53%
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APPENDIX B. TEXT OF TREATMENT CONDITIONS (LOW/HIGH)
Hispanic Immigration and Culture in the United States
BYLINE: By CAMPBELL JOHNSON
SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Pg. 23
LENGTH: [512/518] words
The 2010 Decennial Census is out, and, as most are aware, there has been a significant
increase in Hispanic immigrants in most parts of the country in recent years. While
immigration is often a topic of contemporary discussion in economics circles, less often
considered are the cultural implications of immigration. Recent immigrants bring their
culture with them, and this has led to an increased presence of Hispanic culture in cities
across the United States, a trend expected to continue for at least the near future.
Consider, for example, the typical American cities of Fairfield, NJ, Topeka, KS, Eugene, OR,
or Newton, Mississippi. According to the Decennial Census, the Hispanic population in each
of these cities grew [ /drastically] from about 5% of the population in 2000 to roughly
[10%/30%] in 2010. With this increased presence of Hispanic immigrants has come a
changing local culture. According to the National Restaurant Association, in 2000 4% of
these cities’ restaurants were owned and operated by Hispanic immigrants. By 2010, this
number had more than [doubled/tripled] to [9%/18%]. More generally, one sees a
[rising/surging] number of Hispanic businesses within the strip malls of these areas.
Obviously, culture is also intimately intertwined with language, and with increasing Hispanic
immigration comes a [ /drastic] growth in Spanish-speaking citizens across U.S. cities.
Driving down the street in cities like Fairfield, for example, such changes are apparent in the
signage outside strip malls and places of business. Whereas English used to be the sole
medium of communication for such displays, [one can sometimes see/one more often than
not sees] signs with both English and Spanish translations, and even Spanish-only
communications.
Many see these developments as a
% Hispanic
positive change to their local culture,
providing new opportunities and
30%
additional experiences. John W., for
example, a resident of Fairfield, thinks
such changes have made his city a
20%
more interesting and exciting place to
live: “Five years ago you had basically
two choices for eating out in Fairfield,
10%
fast food or the local burger place.
With the increase in Hispanic
0%
immigrants, we now have a wealth of
2000
2010
new choices, not only Mexican, but
Spanish, Brazilian, even a new
Argentinean restaurant!” John also thinks the increased presence of the Spanish language is
a positive development: “It has encouraged my family and me to try to learn a new
language, which is great thing I think.”
Many do not see these developments as a positive change to their local culture, but as a
threat to their long-standing way of life. Mark S., for example, another resident of Fairfield,
thinks that these changes have made his city a completely different place to live: “The
changes over the last five years have been so large that I barely recognize Fairfield
anymore. Sure there are a bunch of new restaurants, but my family and I were perfectly
happy with the old ones; it seems that every new opening comes from a different country.”
Mark is also unhappy with the increased presence of the Spanish language: “When I walk
into a business now, I always wonder whether the clerk will understand me or the signs will
be in English.”
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APPENDIX C. NEED FOR NONSPECIFIC COGNITIVE CLOSURE ITEMS
For each item, please indicate how much you agree or disagree with the statement. Do you
Strongly agree, somewhat agree, slightly agree, slightly disagree, somewhat disagree, or strongly
disagree?
1. “I enjoy the uncertainty of going into a new situation without knowing what might
happen.”
2. “I dislike unpredictable situations.”
3. “I don’t like to be with people who are capable of unexpected actions.”
4. “I prefer to socialize with familiar friends because I know what to expect from them.”
5. “I think it is fun to change my plans at the last moment.”
6. “I dislike it when a person’s statement could mean many different things.”
7. “I feel uncomfortable when someone’s meaning or intention is unclear to me.”
8. “I feel uncomfortable when I don’t understand the reason why an event occurred in my
life.”
9. “When I am confused about an important issue, I feel very upset.”
10. “It’s annoying to listen to someone who cannot seem to make up his or her mind.”
42