Perceived economic security, relative gratification , and xenophobic sentiment during the Trump administration

AbstractThe bulk of prior research focuses on economic hard times as a source of material insecurity and relative deprivation in fueling negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. The present study shifts the focus to a novel concept: relative gratification. During the height of Trump administration, the American economy enjoyed unprecedented growth and stability. Yet, as our study shows, anti-immigrant sentiment became more pronounced among US citizens with greater perceived material security, i.e., those who felt more relatively “gratified.” What is the logic behind this seemingly paradoxical outcome? By drawing on insights from the social psychology literature, we propose and demonstrate that favorable macroeconomic conditions instilled in some people a sense of privileged entitlement and heightened national pride, both of which contributed to hostilities toward the foreign born. Our moderation analysis also indicates that controlling for a proxy for Trump approval, this relationship was stronger for Republican-leaning individuals as well as those who self-identify as being more politically conservative. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Appendix A. Mixed-effects models examining the relationship between measures of relative gratification and xenophobic sentiment.Download CSVDisplay TableAppendix B. Robustness checks for the interaction effects (Pew Political Survey, July 2019).Download CSVDisplay TableAppendix C. Sensitivity analysis using Trump party approval as the moderator (Pew Political Survey, July 2019).Download CSVDisplay TableNotes1 According to a report by Pew Research Center (Citation2019), at the second anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration, although his approval ratings suffered in other areas, the American voters’ perceptions of economic conditions “continue to be positive” and the public’s evaluation of Trump’s handling of the national economy “remains a relative strength.” As we will demonstrate in the main text, anti-immigrant sentiments were in fact higher among study participants who more favorably assessed the domestic macroeconomic situation.2 See Runciman’s (Citation1966) classic conceptions of egotistical (individual) relative deprivation and fraternal (group) relative deprivation. Our use of this concept is consistent with the following definition: “feelings that one’s group is unfairly deprived of desirable goods in comparison to relevant out-groups” (Meuleman et al. Citation2020).3 In Trump’s America, for the most part, it was believed to be largely unauthorized (e.g., Mexican) immigrants as well as overseas foreign (e.g., Chinese) workers presumably in direct labor market competition (Pettigrew Citation2017; for a related view, see also Hochschild Citation2016).4 Relatedly, political support for the Leave option in the Brexit referendum was systematically higher in regions hit harder by economic globalization, i.e., places with greater foreign economic competition (Colantone and Stanig Citation2018).5 According to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from its annual Economic Outlook Symposium (https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2020/429), in 2019 the US economy had entered the 11th year of its expansion, the longest ever in the country’s history, with the real gross domestic product at its highest level ever. This phenomenal growth was stymied only by the unexpected arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in the following year. For more detail, see Strauss and Sarussi (Citation2020).6 According to one account, Trump reframed national identity in terms of security threat from domestic ‘enemies of the people’ (i.e., immigrants), thereby successfully making populist appeals to fear, anxiety, and resentment (Löfflmann Citation2022).7 As a substantial literature shows, there is a positive association between nationalism/nationalist identification and outgroup (anti-immigrant) prejudice (e.g., Ariely Citation2021; Feinstein and Bonikowski Citation2021).8 The perception of external threat from outsiders (immigrants) can further trigger nationalist feeling, hence leading to a self-feeding cycle (see Wamsler Citation2019). Parenthetically, the ‘social dominance theory’ (Sidanius and Pratto Citation1999) would predict that the majority (ingroup) would engage in greater extractive competition against the minority (outgroup) under conditions of greater threat.9 As an anonymous reviewer pointed out, a critical issue here is that positive macroeconomic evaluation may be conflated with political support for Trump. Given data limitations, it is not possible for us to disentangle this issue methodologically. As a partial solution, we adjusted for subjective evaluation of Trump’s political (i.e., Republican) party performance since his presidential inauguration. Including this additional control does not substantively change our main findings. That is, our main hypothesis concerning the positive association between relative gratification and anti-immigrant sentiment holds, while controlling for party performance evaluation.10 The irony, of course, is that this sense of personal abandonment coexisted along with a generally optimistic evaluation of the national economy supported by objective indicators of robust macroeconomic growth. In the U.S., as Mutz (Citation2018) argues, it was ultimately a loss in social status, not material deprivation, that drove many (including the poor as well as the well-to-do) to back Trump on the day of election.11 In terms of timeline, this particular study precedes the public opinion survey conducted by Pew Research Center (Citation2019), on which Figure 2 is based, and follows the Gallup poll (2020) on which Figure 1 is based, as previously discussed in the main text.12 As one anonymous reviewer pointed out, our contextual level refers to the state, making it difficult to examine the proximate effect of intergroup contact. Unfortunately, PEW data do not provide geocoded information at a more granular level. However, in our study, this is not a critical concern since our hypotheses are all conceptualized and operationalized exclusively at the individual unit of analysis. As such, state-level covariates are included in our models as controls for a conservative test of our hypotheses; they are not used to test them directly. In models not shown, we considered other state-level covariates (e.g., % BA, % politically conservative). Given the relatively small number of higher-level units (i.e., 51 states), we opted to include the ones shown in our models. We also did not find any significant cross-level interactions between our main moderators and state-level measures.Additional informationNotes on contributorsHarris Hyun-Soo KimHarris Hyun-Soo Kim is a Professor of Sociology at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. His research interests include social capital, social networks, international migration, civic engagement, and political participation.Chae Eun KimChae Eun Kim is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University. She is primarily interested in gender and inequality.Hyun Jin (Katelyn) KimHyun Jin (Katelyn) Kim is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is working on her doctoral dissertation related to demography and health inequality.