inter-group relations

“Team and Nation: Sports, nationalism, and attitudes toward refugees” With YY. Zhou. comparative political studies (2021). [Pre-analysis plan, supplementary materials, Data]

Media: PODCAST, The Conversation, Digital Fieldwork

How do major national events influence attitudes toward non-nationals? Recent research suggests that national sports team wins help foster national pride, weaken ethnic attachments, and build trust among conational out-group members. This paper asks a related question: By heightening nationalism, do these victories also affect attitudes towards foreign out-groups, specifically refugees? We examine this question using a natural experiment–the 2019 Africa Cup football match between Kenya and Tanzania–coupled with an online survey experiment conducted with a panel of 2,647 respondents. We find that winning increases national pride and preferences for resource allocation toward conationals. But winning also leads to negative views of refugees’ cultural contribution to the country. However, we present experimental evidence that reframing national sports victories as a product of cooperation among diverse players and highlighting shared superordinate identities can offset these views and help foster positive attitudes toward refugees.

“Attribute Affinity: U.S. Natives’ Attitudes Toward Immigrants.” With A. Berinsky, T. Rizzo & E. Heaps. Political Behavior (2018). [Replication materials]

We examine the extent to which relevant social identity traits shared between two individuals—what we term “attribute affinity”—can moderate out-group hostility. We argue that in-group affinity is a powerful force in shaping preferences over potential immigrants. We focus on two closely related, yet distinct, dimensions of identity: religion and religiosity. Using evidence from three surveys that included two embedded experiments, we show that sharing strength in religious practice can diminish strong aversion to immigrants of different religious affiliations. We find that, among highly religious U.S. natives, anti-Muslim bias is lower toward very religious Muslims, compared to non-religious Muslims. This attenuating effect of attribute affinity with respect to religiosity on anti-Muslim bias presents the strongest evidence supporting our argument.