COVID-19 and prejudice against migrants: the mediating roles of need for cognitive closure and binding moral foundations. A comparative study

ABSTRACT

What mitigates prejudice against migrants in situations of uncertainty? Addressing this question, we explored how individuals with greater COVID-19 concern perceive migrants as a greater threat and show prejudice against them, indirectly through the mechanism of need for cognitive closure and binding moral foundations.

This study was conducted in two European countries: Malta and Italy. Six hundred and seventy-six individuals participated in this quantitative study (Malta: N = 204; Italy N = 472). Results from this study showed that the need for cognitive closure and binding moral foundations mediate the relationship between COVID-19 concern and prejudice against migrants in both countries. When testing the three binding moral foundations (loyalty, authority, and purity), the authority foundation seems to be the most consistent predictor.

The implications of the findings contribute to theories about how situational uncertainty caused by COVID-19, together with the need for epistemic certainty and binding morality, contribute to increased prejudiced attitudes against migrants.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• Prejudice
• Migrantsa
• Moral Foundations

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at doi.https://10.17605/OSF.IO/UNS3H.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at doi.https://10.17605/OSF.IO/UNS3H.

Ethical approval

This research was approved by the ethics committee at Sapienza, Università di Roma, protocol no. 647. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were per the said committee’s ethical standards and/or national research committee.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fleur Bianco

Fleur Bianco, is a psychotherapist, counsellor and Doctoral Student in social psychology at “La Sapienza”, University of Rome, Italy. She has worked in various clinical settings as a psychotherapist and counsellor. Her research interests are pschology of groups, intergroup relations, sterrotypes and prejudice and morality.

Ankica Kosic

Ankica Kosicis an Associate Professor of Social Psychology at ‘Sapienza’ - University of Rome. She got Ph.D in Social Psychology in 1999 from Sapienza - University of Rome. In the period of 2006 to 2008 she got Marie Curie Post-doctoral Fellowship and was based at the Kingston University in the United Kingdom. Before that, from 2001 to 2006, she worked as a Research Fellow at the European University Institute in Italy, where she was involved in several European research projects. Her research interest concerns the issues of migrant integration, intergroup relationships, stereotypes and prejudice, and the process of reconciliation in post-conflict areas. She is a member of the European Association of Social Psychology and of the Italian Association of Psychology.

Antonio Pierro

Antonio Pierro, PhD, is Professor of Social Psychology at the “La Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy. His research has appeared in Psychological Science, Psychological Review, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. His research interests include the psychology of power and leadership, persuasion, group processes. He is interested in the motivation cognition interface.