SOCIAL CHANGE AS A SOURCE OF MACROSOCIAL STRESS: DOES IT ENHANCE NATIONALISTIC ATTITUDES?

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF EFFECTS OF THE EU EASTERN ENLARGEMENTFootnote1
The study reported here is part of the project ‘Does the enlargement of the European Union to Eastern Europe mobilize right-wing extremism? Fears of disintegration and hopes: A causal analysis based on a cross-cultural survey study’, principal investigators Susanne Rippl (Technische Universität Chemnitz) and Klaus Boehnke (International University Bremen). The project was part of the research network ‘Disintegration processes–Strengthening the integration potentials of modern society’, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and directed by Wilhelm Heitmeyer (Universität Bielefeld). The paper is in large parts based on a poster ‘The Perception of EU-Enlargement in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic’ presented for the team by the second author at the 27th Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society for Political Psychology, Lund, Sweden, July 2004, and a paper ‘Macrosocial stress as a source of increased rejection of ‘the other?’, delivered by the first author at the 17th International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Xian, China, August 2004.
The study reported here is part of the project ‘Does the enlargement of the European Union to Eastern Europe mobilize right-wing extremism? Fears of disintegration and hopes: A causal analysis based on a cross-cultural survey study’, principal investigators Susanne Rippl (Technische Universität Chemnitz) and Klaus Boehnke (International University Bremen). The project was part of the research network ‘Disintegration processes–Strengthening the integration potentials of modern society’, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and directed by Wilhelm Heitmeyer (Universität Bielefeld). The paper is in large parts based on a poster ‘The Perception of EU-Enlargement in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic’ presented for the team by the second author at the 27th Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society for Political Psychology, Lund, Sweden, July 2004, and a paper ‘Macrosocial stress as a source of increased rejection of ‘the other?’, delivered by the first author at the 17th International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Xian, China, August 2004.

Klaus Boehnke PhD International University of Bremen, Bremen, GermanyCorrespondence[email protected]

Angela Kindervater International University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

Dirk Baier Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony, Hannover, Germany

Susanne Rippl Department of Sociology, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany