Sources of anti-immigrant sentiments in Western democracies: A contextual approach.

The electoral success of nativist parties in several Western democracies in the last decade surprised many political operators and academics alike, in part due to an insufficient understanding of the confluence of triggers of anti-immigrant sentiments. The extent of knowledge has since improved with notable strides made at the intersection of multiple sources of intolerant attitudes, such as between realistic and symbolic threat, threat perception and belief systems, individual-level and group-level characteristics, and biological and cultural determinants. By contextualizing the literature in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia, we highlight region specificity as another consideration for future research.

Paving the road to war with group membership, appraisal antecedents, and anger.

This study uses appraisal theory, functionalist approach to emotions, and recent theory on group emotions as a basic framework to model the genesis of supporting military action. During the year after the events of 9/11, 588 college students participated in a series of four studies that assessed religious affiliation, appraisal antecedents, anger response to viewing photographs of the 9/11 attack, and support for military action. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that the relation between support for the war and attitudes toward terrorism and relevance could be explained adequately by a model in which anger mediated the effects of attitudes and relevance on support.