Background

Immigration has received a great deal of attention and scrutiny from the British public in recent years. In 2016, immigration was reported to be the most important issue facing the United Kingdom in a large‐scale public opinion poll, with 34% of respondents placing it above issues such as the EU, the NHS, and the economy (Blinder & Allen, 2016). This is in sharp contrast to the same poll pre‐2000, when only 4% of people considered immigration to be the most pressing concern facing the United Kingdom.

Coinciding with this rise in public interest in immigration is an increase in negative attitudes towards immigrants. In a 2013 survey, 56% of British respondents agreed that levels of immigration into the United Kingdom should be reduced ‘a lot’ (Park, Bryson, & Curtice, 2014). In 1995, this figure stood at 39%. Taken together, these figures show that immigration is viewed with both increasing interest and increasing negativity among Britons, particularly since the turn of the century.

Racial and religious prejudice These negative attitudes towards immigrants may be exacerbated further by both the racial and religious groups to which immigrants belong. Both race and religion tend to feature heavily in public conversations about immigration (Fox, 2016); however, there is some dispute about the extent to which these two factors influence attitudes towards immigrants. Prominent public figures have weighed in on the debate. The Archbishop of Canterbury asserted that it would be ‘outrageous’ to label those who are concerned about immigration as ‘racist’ (Demianyk, 2016). Others disagreed, suggesting instead that anti‐immigrant attitudes may be an overt expression of covert racist (or otherwise prejudicial) attitudes (Chakrabortty, 2016). There is much evidence to suggest that both race and religion influence attitude judgements outside of the context of immigration. Black people (compared to White people) are generally evaluated more negatively across a range of criteria in predominantly White, Western countries. They are associated with traits such as hostility and laziness (Devine, 1989; Dovidio, Evans, & Tyler, 1986), both implicitly and explicitly (Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997). Similarly, implicit and explicit attitudes towards Muslims tend to be more negative than towards non‐Muslims (when evaluated by non‐Muslim participants in Western contexts; Rowatt, Franklin, & Cotton, 2005). These findings can be explained in terms of intergroup biases that arise as a result of social categorization (Deschamps & Doise, 1978). White participants deem Black targets to be out‐group members as they belong to a different social category, resulting in increased biases against them (the same is true in the case of non‐Muslim participants when making judgements about Muslims; Abrams & Hogg, 1990). However, individuals may belong to a number of different social categories (Crisp & Hewstone, 2007). The fewer categories that are shared, the more intergroup bias will occur (Crisp, Hewstone, & Rubin, 2001). This may be circumvented by making a superordinate in‐group identity salient (Gaertner, Dovidio, Anastasio, Bachman, & Rust, 1993; Gaertner et al., 2000). In terms of the present research, this suggests that Black and Muslim immigrants will be subject to greater prejudice as they represent a double out‐group. In the case of the former, Black immigrants belong to a different racial group and have a different immigration status to our sample. For Muslim immigrants, these differences are reflected in their religion and immigration status. Meanwhile, White immigrants will benefit from a shared racial identity with participants and will be discriminated against to a lesser extent as a result.

Political conservatism Political conservatism is a well‐established predictor of attitudes towards a number of out‐groups. Those who identify as politically conservative (an ideology defined by ‘resistance to change and [a] tendency to prefer safe, traditional, and conventional forms of institution and behaviour’; Wilson, 1973, p. 4) tend to harbour more negative attitudes towards immigrants (Varela, Gonzalez, Clark, Cramer, & Crosby, 2013), Black people (Lambert & Chasteen, 1997), and Muslims (De Zavala, Cislak, & Wesolowska, 2010). Furthermore, highly conservative individuals are less likely to show reductions in prejudice when evaluating immigrants who share a social category with them (Prati, Moscatelli, Pratto, & Rubini, 2017). This demonstrates that conservative biases against immigrants are particularly strong. The present research will investigate whether a similar moderation effect persists in instances where immigrant targets vary according to their racial or religious group.

Infrahumanization Infrahumanization is a form of dehumanization in which one's in‐group is considered fully human while out‐groups are denied some of the key attributes that constitute humanity (Leyens et al., 2000). Central to this is the capacity to feel secondary emotions. Secondary emotions are those that are considered to be uniquely human; examples include remorse, compassion, and nostalgia. These emotions are judged to be reflective of the human essence and are characterized as less visible, with a longer duration and as having an internal cause (Demoulin et al., 2004). In contrast, primary emotions (such as happiness and anger) are not exclusively human (meaning they may also be experienced by animals) and thus are not a key part of the human essence. Infrahumanization typically occurs when more secondary emotions are ascribed to in‐group members than out‐group members (Leyens et al., 2000). It is useful to note that there are other models of infrahumanization beyond Leyens et al. (2000). Haslam (2006) conceptualized humanness not only as a human–animal distinction (termed ‘human uniqueness’) but also as a human–object distinction (‘human nature’). Like the model proposed by Leyens et al., this model has substantial empirical support (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014) across multiple different cultural contexts (Bain, Vaes, Kashima, Haslam, & Guan, 2011). However, Haslam's model was not central to the present study so it will not be discussed at length. The importance of research on infrahumanization cannot be underestimated. Although the consequences of infrahumanization are less severe than when out‐groups are dehumanized completely (Leyens, Demoulin, Vaes, Gaunt, & Paladino, 2007), increased infrahumanization is associated with increased in‐group love and out‐group hate (Brewer, 1999) and thus can have behavioural consequences for the out‐group (Vaes, Paladino, Castelli, Leyens, & Giovanazzi, 2003). Infrahumanization reflects a subtle denial of the humanity of out‐groups which is then expressed in the differential treatment of out‐group members (relative to in‐group members). Infrahumanization is relevant to the present research as immigrants (Prati, Crisp, Meleady, & Rubini, 2016), Black people (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, & Jackson, 2008), and Muslims (Kteily, Hodson, & Bruneau, 2016) are all subject to this bias in Western contexts. In the case of immigrants (Esses, Jackson, & Armstrong, 1998) and Muslims (Viki, Osgood, & Phillips, 2013) in particular, the extent to which these groups are dehumanized is associated with how threatening they are perceived to be. Depictions of immigrants as partial in‐group members (vs. wholly out‐group members) through multiple categorization have been shown to reduce infrahumanization of this group via reductions in threat (Prati et al., 2016). Of the many potential moderators of the relationship between out‐group identity and infrahumanization (Vaes, Leyens, Paola Paladino, & Pires Miranda, 2012), political conservatism is especially relevant to the current study. High conservatism predicts greater dehumanization of out‐groups in general (DeLuca‐McLean & Castano, 2009), and political conservatives tend to perceive out‐groups as more threatening than do liberals (Wilson, 1973). The present research used a measure of infrahumanization to assess participants’ levels of prejudice towards different immigrant groups. This measure was useful as it captured a subtler form of dehumanization by using attribution of different emotions to determine a target's perceived humanness. Thus, participants were unlikely to determine that we were asking about dehumanization when completing the measure, as the humanity of the targets was never directly referred to.