A Dual Process Model of Attitudes towards Immigration:
Person × Residential Area Effects in a National Sample
Chris G. Sibley
University of Auckland, New Zealand
John Duckitt
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Robin Bergh
Uppsala University, Sweden
Danny Osborne
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Ryan Perry
University of Auckland, New Zealand
Frank Asbrock
Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
Andrew Robertson
Colmar Brunton, New Zealand
Gavin Armstrong
Wellington City Council, New Zealand
Marc Stewart Wilson
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Fiona Kate Barlow
The University of Queensland, Australia
This research took a person × situation approach to predicting prejudice by looking at how social worldviews
interact with real-world environmental factors to predict how people respond to immigrants within their
local area. Taking a Dual Process Motivational approach, we hypothesized that a higher proportion of
immigrants in the local community would be associated with negative attitudes toward immigration for
respondents high in dangerous world beliefs. Conversely, we hypothesized that living in a highly affluent (as
opposed to socioeconomically deprived) community would be associated with negative attitudes toward immi-
gration for respondents high in competitive world beliefs. Both hypotheses were supported using regional
information derived from national census data combined with representative survey data from a large telephone
sample conducted in New Zealand (N = 6,489). These findings support the proposition that individual differences
interact with specific features of the environment to predict people’s levels of prejudice in distinct ways.
KEY WORDS: social worldviews, person × situation, immigrant density, regional deprivation, immigration
Political Psychology, Vol. 34, No. 4, 2013
doi: 10.1111/pops.12009
553
0162-895X © 2013 International Society of Political Psychology
Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ,
and PO Box 378 Carlton South, 3053 Victoria, Australia