When attitudes do not fit: discordance of acculturation attitudes as an antecedent of intergroup threat

Recent research has shown that the perspectives of both minorities and majorities should be taken into account to reach a deeper understanding of the acculturation process and its consequences for intergroup relations. The authors report two experiments that investigated the impact of discordant acculturation attitudes on perceived threat. In Study 1 (N=183), Germans were asked for their attitudes toward Turks and Italians. Different levels of concordance of acculturation attitudes were induced by presenting participants with newspaper articles describing the acculturation attitude of the respective out-group and perceived threat was measured. In Study 2 (N=100), two fictitious immigrant groups were used as target groups. Results in both studies showed that discordance of acculturation attitudes leads to higher perceptions of intergroup threat than concordance of acculturation attitudes. Furthermore, both studies supported the assumption that a similar out-group is perceived as less threatening than a dissimilar out-group.