In the U.S. media, unauthorized immigrants are often interchangeably referred to as “illegal aliens,” “illegal immigrants,” and undocumented immigrants.” In spite of formal equivalence, these terms carry different connotations, but the effects of these labels on people's attitudes toward immigrants are not well documented. In this replication study, 274 undergraduate students in psychology responded to one of three randomly distributed versions of a 20-item scale measuring attitudes toward unauthorized immigration. The items in the three scale versions varyingly referred to immigrants using the three terms. Results showed differences in attitudes toward unauthorized immigration between all experimental conditions. The label “illegal immigrants” yielded significantly less positive attitudes compared to the label “undocumented immigrants,” and respondents exposed to the label “illegal aliens” showed the most positive attitudes. Furthermore, the effects of the experimental conditions were not moderated by the respondents' patriotism, sex, or own immigrant background.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AugustinusM.QuinnC. (2003) Social categorization and attitudinal evaluations: Illegal immigrants, refuges, or asylum seekers?New Review of Social Psychology, 2, 29–37.
BrewerM. B. (2003) Intergroup relations. (2nd ed.) New York: Open Univer. Press.
4.
CarrageK. M.RoefsW. (2004) The neglect of power in recent framing research. Journal of Communication, 54(2), 214–232.
5.
ChongD.DruckmanJ. N. (2007) Framing theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 10, 103–126.
6.
CohenJ. (1988) Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. (2nd ed.) Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
7.
DruckmanJ. D. (2011) What's it all about? Framing in political science. In KerenG. (Ed.), Perspectives on framing. New York: Psychology Press. Pp. 279–301.
8.
EaglyA. E. (2009) The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender. American Psychologist, 64(8), 644–658.
9.
EkehammarB.AkramiN.ArayaT. (2003) Gender differences in implicit prejudice. Personality and Individual Differences, 34, 1509–1523.
10.
EntmanR. M. (1993) Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43, 53–58. DOI: 10.1111/J.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x
11.
GamsonA.WolfsfeldG. (1993) Movements and media as interacting systems. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 528, 114–125.
12.
GlorfeldL. W. (1995) An improvement on Horn's parallel analysis methodology for selecting the correct number of factors to retain. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 55(3), 377–393. DOI: 10.1177/0013164495055003002
13.
HewstoneM.RubinM.WillisH. (2002) Intergroup bias. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 575–604.
KahnemanD.TverskyA. (1987) Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39, 341–350.
18.
KerenG. (Ed.) (2011) Perspectives enframing. New York: Psychology Press.
19.
KnollB. R.SanbornH.RedlawskD. (2011) Framing labels and immigration policy attitudes in the Iowa caucuses: “Trying to Out-Tancredo Tancredo.”Political Behavior, 33(3), 433–454.
20.
KooleS. L.LakensD. (2012) Rewarding replications: A sure and simple way to improve psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 608–614.
McKenzieC. R. M.NelsonJ. D. (2003) What speaker's choice of frame reveals: Reference points, frame selection, and framing effects. Psychonomic Bulletin, 10, 509–602.
23.
Migration Policy Institute. (2011) Legal avenues of immigration in the United States. Retrieved August 8, 2011, from data@migrationpolicy.org.
24.
NelsonT. E.ClawsonR. A.OxleyZ. M. (1997) Media framing of a civil liberties conflict and its effect on tolerance. American Political Science Review, 91(3), 567–583.
25.
OmmundsenR.LarsenK. S. (1997) Attitudes toward illegal aliens: The reliabilty and validity of a Likert-type scale. Journal of Social Psychology, 137(5), 665–667.
26.
OmmundsenR.LarsenK. S. (1999) Attitudes toward illegal immigration in Scandinavia and the United States. Psychological Reports, 84, 1331–1338.
27.
OmmundsenR.Van der VeerK.MørchS.HakT.LarsenK. S. (2002) Attitudes toward illegal immigration: A cross-national methodological comparison. The Journal of Social Psychology, 136, 103–110.
28.
PearsonM. R. (2010) How “undocumented workers” and “illegal aliens” affect prejudice toward Mexican immigrants. Social Influence, 5(2), 118–132.
29.
PerniceR. E.Van der VeerK.OmmundsenR. (2008) On the use of student samples for scale construction. Psychological Reports, 102, 459–464.
RohanM. J. (2000) A rose by any name? The values construct. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4(3), 255–277.
32.
RohanM. J.ZannaM. (2001) Values and ideologies. In TesserA.SchwarzN. (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Intraindividual processes. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Pp. 458–478.
SchatzR.StaubE. (1997) Manifestations of blind and constructive patriotism: Personality correlates and individual-group relations. In Bar-TalD.StaubE. (Eds.), Patriotism in the lives of individuals and nations. Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall. Pp. 229–246.
35.
SchatzR.StaubE.LavineH. (1999) On the varieties of national attachment: Blind versus constructive patriotism. Political Psychology, 20, 151–174.
36.
SchmidtS. (2009) Shall we really do it again? The powerful concept of replication is neglected in the social sciences. Review of General Psychology, 13, 90–100.
37.
SchwarzN. (2007) Attitudes construction: Evaluation in context. Social Cognition, 25(5), 638–656.
38.
SoderlundM. (2007) The role of news media in shaping and transforming the public perception of Mexican immigration and the laws involved. Law & Psychology Review, 31, 167–177.
39.
SpryC.HornseyM. (2007) The influence of blind and constructive patriotism on attitudes toward multiculturalism and immigration. Australian Journal of Psychology, 59(3), 151–158.
40.
StaubE. (1989) The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. New York: Cambridge Univer. Press.
41.
StaubE. (1997) Blind versus constructive patriotism: Moving from embeddedness in the group to critical loyalty and action. In Bar-TalD.StaubE. (Eds.), Patriotism in the lives of individuals and nations. Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall. Pp. 213–228.
42.
TverskyA.KahnemanD. (1981) The framing of decision and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453–458.
Van der VeerK.OmmundsenR.HakT.LarsenK. (2003) Meaning shift of items in different language versions: A cross-national validation study of the Illegal Aliens Scale. Quality & Quantity, 37, 193–206.
46.
Van der VeerK.OmmundsenR.KrumovK.HakT.LarsenK. S. (2008) Scale development to measure attitudes toward undocumented migration. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 49, 357–363.
47.
Van der VeerK.OmmundsenR.YakushkoO.HiglerL. (2011) Cross-national measure of fear-based xenophobia: Development of a cumulative scale. Psychological Reports, 109(1), 27–42.
ZannaM. P. (1990) Attitude function: Is it related to attitude structure? In GoldbergM. E.GornG.PollayR. W. (Eds.), Advances in consumer research. Vol. 17. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research. Pp. 98–100. Retrieved from http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/displayasp?id=7003.
50.
ZannaM. P.RempelJ. K. (1988) Attitudes: A new look at an old concept. In Bar-TalD.KruglanskiA. (Eds.), The social psychology of knowledge. New York: Cambridge Univer. Press. Pp. 315–334.
