How Essentialism Affects Anti-Immigrant Prejudice

This is the second post in a two-part series. Read the first post here.

Some people tend to perceive group categories (such as gender, race and ethnicity) as genetically-immutable and biologically-rooted aspects of those persons, and these unchanging elements make the people in those categories who they are. This way of thinking is termed “psychological essentialism” (Prentice & Miller, 2007), and it has implications for prejudice and the perceptions of those who are perceived as “outsiders” like immigrants.

People who have essentialist beliefs are more likely to think in terms of stereotypes, and behave toward members of other groups with prejudice and discrimination (Yzerbyt, Corneille, & Estrada, 2001). They are more likely to avoid contact with and have prejudice against immigrants (Zagrean, Miklikowska, & Barni, 2024). Recall what I mentioned in my previous post with regard to social dominance orientation. Those high in SDO think the natural order of the world is to have people ordered hierarchically into “haves and have-nots”. Research shows that essentialism promotes prejudice by affirming a social hierarchy (Mandalaywala, Amodio, & Rhodes, 2018). Interestingly, some evidence shows that people can be made to reverse their essentialist beliefs (e.g. by leading the person to question the biological basis of category membership) (Landry, Ihm, Protzko, & Schooler, 2022). When this occurs, people are less likely to dehumanize outside others.

People who are prejudiced are more likely to be motivated to seek cognitive closure (Kruglanski, 1990) and they have a lower “need for cognition” (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). What this means is that prejudiced people dislike thinking extensively, and considering the “grey areas” and nuances, and the “it depends” parts of social life. To them, something is either right or wrong. Black or white. Psychologists refer to this as “categorical thinking” (Nelson & Olson, 2024). They are the embodiment of the intolerant phrase, “my way or the highway.”

When you couple these psychological characteristics and processes with a charged political climate in which extreme right-wing individuals and political groups decry immigration (both documented and undocumented) as an “emergency” or even an “invasion,” research shows it has an effect on the populace, swaying attitudes against immigrants (Enos, 2023). Those persons who are already likely to be intolerant, due to one or more of the psychological processes and characteristics discussed above (and many others too numerous to discuss in the short space of this blog), are then even more likely to perceive immigrants negatively upon hearing from politicians who scapegoat immigrants as “invaders.”

I believe that immigrants aren’t invaders. They aren’t something to be feared. The basis of our country is that we are a “nation of immigrants” and that our diversity is what makes us strong. One need not look far for evidence of this view, as it can be found on much of our currency in the Latin phrase, “E pluribus unum.” Out of many, one. Our country has been a place of opportunity for immigrants since its inception. The freedoms offered in the U.S. make it a special place of hope for those abroad, seeking to better their life. Our country has done an imperfect (to put it mildly) job of welcoming immigrants, and we need to do better. With more concerted efforts and better education, we can live up to the ideals in the poem by Emma Lazarus on the plaque on the base of the statue of liberty:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”