POLITICAL USE OF IMMIGRANT STEREOTYPES 1 Schrodinger’s Immigrant: The Political and Strategic Use of (Contradictory) Stereotypical Traits about Immigrants

In two experimental studies, we explored the politicized use of immigrant stereotypes by members of the Portuguese host society. Our goal was to demonstrate that stereotypes strategically vary to support political arguments and mobilize others towards one’s political position. In Study 1, the way in which participants described immigrants varied as a function of (a) whether or not they were provided with the opportunity to mobilize an ingroup audience, (b) the direction in which they sought to mobilize that audience, and (c) the instrumentality of particular stereotypical traits in a given argumentative context. Study 2 examined the cognitive processes underlying the strategic expression of stereotypes, by measuring implicit stereotyping and manipulating participants’ ability to do cognitive work prior to and during stereotype expression. The findings showed that (a) variability in stereotype expression was matched by a consonant variability in implicit representations of immigrants, and that (b) the ability to do cognitive work was a necessary condition for variability in stereotype expression to emerge. Taken together, these findings suggest that strategic effects in stereotype expression are underpinned by strategic work on intra-psychic representations. We conclude by discussing the complementarity between strategic and cognitive explanations of stereotype expression, as well as by arguing the possibility of a more predictive approach to the politicized use of stereotypes. POLITICAL USE OF IMMIGRANT STEREOTYPES 3 I get tired of people trying to stereotype us because they never get it right. You get a group that says “Mexicans are lazy”. Then they say “Mexicans are taking away our jobs” (laughs and applause). Which one is it? Are we lazy or are we taking away your jobs? -Cristela Alonzo, Mexican-American stand-up comedian Schrodinger’s Immigrant: The Political and Strategic Use of (Contradictory) Stereotypical Traits about Immigrants In this paper, we provide the first experimental evidence that outgroup stereotypes can be used strategically to politically mobilize an audience. Specifically, we focus on the issue of immigration and show that individuals attempting to mobilize an audience about immigration restriction strategically adjust their stereotypical descriptions of immigrants to achieve mobilization towards their own position. We further show evidence suggesting that strategic variability in overt stereotyping need not be a purely public effect, but can be underpinned by strategic cognitive work leading to similar variability in the private, cognitive representations of stereotype users. Our general purpose, however, is less to demonstrate the flexibility of stereotypical descriptions than to illustrate their role as political tools. That is, stereotypical descriptions constitute one of the main bases on which political arguments about groups are deployed and legitimized. Coined by a parody news website (Adler, 2014), the expression “Schrodinger’s immigrant” illustrates this logic applied to immigrant stereotypes. The expression aims to mock anti-immigration discourse by pointing out the apparent contradiction between describing immigrants as simultaneously “stealing our jobs” and “lazing around on benefits”. The subtext of the parody is to discredit such descriptions as nothing more than convenient devices used to advance a political agenda. Like Schrodinger’s cat, famously both dead and alive at the same time, the immigrant is being attributed contradictory properties, but the contradiction can easily be explained if the political effect of the stereotypes matters more POLITICAL USE OF IMMIGRANT STEREOTYPES 4 than their consistency. By switching between the two contradictory representations, immigrants can be presented as a threat both to job availability for host community members and to the financial viability of the system that provides benefits to the unemployed. In both cases, this justifies taking anti-immigration measures. In the present studies, we rely on this very contradiction between the “lazy profiteer” and the “job-stealing” immigrant to investigate more broadly the strategic and political use of outgroup stereotypes. The Political Function of Stereotypes In his analysis of the social functions of stereotypes, Tajfel (1981; Tajfel & Forgas, 1982) stressed the role that group stereotypes can play in justifying a variety of actions directed at the outgroup. He argued that stereotypes act as “weapons in the struggle for power constantly being waged in society” (Tajfel, 1981, p. 144), and that they could not be understood without taking into account that political role (see also Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994). This relationship between stereotypes and politics is also stressed by System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994) and by Social Dominance Theory (Sidanius, & Pratto 1999), which both underline the role of stereotypes in maintaining the political status quo. One point that remains relatively unaddressed by these approaches, however, concerns the extent to which stereotype users can intentionally use stereotypes to achieve political outcomes—that is, the extent to which stereotypes can become politicized (Condor, 1990; Sindic & Condor, 2014). Only a few studies on collective mobilization, carried out within the context of the strategic component of the Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE; Barreto & Ellemers, 2003; Klein, Spears, & Reicher, 2007; Postmes, Spears, Lea, & Reicher, 2000; Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995) have addressed this question directly. POLITICAL USE OF IMMIGRANT STEREOTYPES 5 SIDE was initially developed to account for deindividuation effects (e.g., Zimbardo, 1969) in social identity terms. It proposed that situational factors such as group immersion and anonymity could increase the salience of social identity, and thereby trigger behavior driven by social identity rather than antisocial behavior (the cognitive component of SIDE). However, the model was later extended to look at how situational factors affect the strategic expression of identity (the strategic component of SIDE), and in particular how that expression varies as a function of audiences characteristics (Barreto, Spear, Ellemers, & Shahinper, 2002; Klein et al., 2007). In that context, SIDE studies on political mobilization have shown that stereotypical descriptions can be strategically deployed in order to sway audiences and achieve mobilization towards the realization of group-based political goals (Reicher, Hopkins, & Condor, 1997; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001; Klein & Licata, 2003; see also Banton, 1988, Roosens, 1989). They show not only that individuals with different political goals rely on different stereotypes to suggest different course of actions, but also that the same individuals can rely on different stereotypes as a function of how their goal is best served given the particular audience. Such intra-individual variability strongly supports the existence of a purposeful political intent. Importantly, SIDE stresses that such behavior is an expression of social identity. Therefore, it occurs when social identity is salient and is led by goals relating to the perceived interest of the group as a whole rather than by personal self-interest. While this does not exclude stereotypes being used strategically for other (e.g., interpersonal) purposes, in line with SIDE our focus in this paper lies with their use in the pursuit of group-based political goals, and specifically in seeking to achieve group mobilization towards affecting the nature of intergroup relationships. POLITICAL USE OF IMMIGRANT STEREOTYPES 6 To be more precise, our main purpose is to extend the findings of the above SIDE studies in at least three ways. First, those studies have focused on the analysis of spontaneous stereotype expression and relied on qualitative (Reicher, Hopkins, & Condor, 1997) or quantitative content analysis (Klein & Licata, 2003). This provides them with a high degree of external validity, but also means that the triangulation of their findings with experimental data is still lacking (see Sindic & Reicher, 2008). In particular, while their findings provide evidence of the role of political goals in shaping spontaneous stereotype expression, the claim of a relation of causality between the two could be reinforced by using political goals as an independent variable and examining the subsequent impact on stereotype use. Second, SIDE does not offer an a priori model of stereotype contents and their potential political uses. Rather, the consonance between stereotypes and goals is established a posteriori, as a result of the empirical analyses themselves. This limits the ability to make predictions as to which contents are used in what contexts and for what purposes. Thus, our second goal in this paper is to contribute towards the development of a more predictive approach to the content of politicized stereotypes. While a comprehensive and systematic model is beyond what can be accomplished with a couple of experimental studies, our aim is to illustrate the type of approach and studies that would be necessary in order to progress towards that purpose, by demonstrating the very possibility of prediction. Third, although the SIDE model includes hypotheses about both cognitive and strategic stereotyping, the articulation between those two sides of the model remains relatively unclear. So far the cognitive side of SIDE has mainly focused on explaining variations in intra-psychic stereotypical representations, and the strategic side on explaining variations in the public expression of stereotypes, as if they were separate phenomena. Thus, our third goal is to contribute towards bridging this gap, by looking at what occurs to the POLITICAL USE OF IMMIGRANT STEREOTYPES 7 intra-psychic representations of stereotype users when they use stereotypes strategically and publicly. The Context and Content