Suchergebnisse

In many societies, immigration is a conflictual topic, leading to heated exchanges between proponents and opponents of immigration. Such debates on immigration might benefit from the engagement of the discussants in empathy and perspective taking. Although empathy and perspective-taking exercises can be beneficial in some contexts, previous research shows marked differences in people with a rightist versus a leftist political orientation when it comes to their motivation to engage in empathy. The degree to which this applies to perspective taking and to the context of debates on immigration has not yet been tested. The current study, conducted in Switzerland, tested how proponents or opponents of immigration react to instructions for empathy and perspective taking in debates on immigration. The results reveal that, compared with participants in the control condition who had no instructions, proponents of immigration who received instructions were more motivated or willing to engage in empathy and perspective taking. Furthermore, proponents of immigration showed decreases in their positive and negative emotions under the perspective-taking instructions. Conversely, for opponents of immigration, perspective-taking instructions increased their perception of other's competitiveness compared with participants in the control condition. Taken together, these results underline the importance of taking an individual's views on immigration into account when implementing interventions for conflict resolution in immigration-related issues.

The effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on the shift from in-person (offline) social interactions to online interactions and its consequences on social support and stress attracted scholarly attention. However, much less is known about how individuals' prior mobility experiences have influenced coping with this shift. In the present research, we hypothesized that people with mobility experiences should already be more familiar with, and could profit more from, online social interactions before the pandemic, which might buffer against the negative impact of the pandemic on the emotional social support they obtained and the stress they felt during these interactions. In order to investigate this issue, we collected data ( N = 875) in Germany during the lockdown between April and May 2021. We measured mobility by introducing a novel approach that encompasses the act of moving houses (both within a country and internationally), commuting patterns, and nationality (migration background). Participants also reported the frequency of their online and offline interactions (before and during the lockdown), as well as the emotional support they obtained from online and offline interactions and the stress felt during lockdown interactions (as compared to before the lockdown). Results provide quantitative evidence in support of the main hypothesis especially regarding migration background. We discuss the relevance of these findings for research on migration and mobility.