Shaping Immigration Explicit and Implicit Attitudes With Framing: The Role of Self-Reported Political Orientation, RWA, and SDO

Abstract

Immigration is a complex phenomenon that significantly involves most Western countries. Political parties often hold divergent views on immigration, which deeply influence their supporters and contribute to societal polarization. To address this divide, moral framing—a technique proven effective in other contexts, such as environmental issues—could offer a promising solution. However, there has been little research on how this approach is influenced by specific aspect of the political ideology, such as Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), or its impact on implicit attitude changes. The present study (N = 230) explored the effectiveness of moral framing in bridging the gap between conservative and liberal individuals in their explicit and implicit attitudes towards immigration. Participants in two experimental groups were presented with a video that ended with either a binding or individualizing moral message in which two immigrants described their positive experiences. A video about unrelated issues was presented in the control condition. Findings showed that conservative individuals expressed less negative explicit and implicit attitudes toward immigration when exposed to the binding moral framing compared to the control group. However, no significant differences emerged between participants exposed to the binding versus individualizing frames. Overall, results indicated that moral framing had a limited effect, but exposure to exemplars of positive integration was effective in shifting both the explicit and implicit attitudes of more conservative individuals, thereby fostering greater consensus across the political spectrum.