| Popis: |
Various research suggests that xenophobia increases when infectious disease threats are salient. Here a longitudinal study tested this hypothesis by examining whether anti-immigrant sentiments varied across four time points during the COVID-19 pandemic (May 2020, February 2021, October 2021, and June 2022; N’s = 998, 711, 549, 537) and as a function of individual-level explicit disease concerns and disgust sensitivity. Results revealed that (1) anti-immigrant sentiments were no higher in early assessments, when COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths were high, than later assessments, when COVID-19 hospitalizations were low, and (2) within-person changes in explicit disease concerns and disgust sensitivity, did not relate to anti-immigrant sentiments, though stable individual differences in disgust sensitivity did. These findings suggest that anecdotal accounts of increased xenophobia during the pandemic do not generalize to the population sampled from here. They also suggest that not all increases in ecological pathogen threats and disease salience increase xenophobia. |
