An Experimental Study on the Variation of the Attitudes towards the Syrian Refugees in Turkey

Aylin Aydin Cakir, Duygu Merve Uysal

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Is it possible to change the negative public attitudes towards refugees? Which factors reinforce such attitudinal changes? Since the refugee population is growing in many countries, finding answers to these questions has become even more important. By focusing on the Turkish context, this study has two specific objectives. First, we aim to find out how – and to what extent – the individual level of prejudice towards the Syrian refugees differs when the refugees are depicted in either empathy or threat-evoking conditions. Second, we try to show the interaction between personal dispositions (authoritarianism) and situational factors (threat-evoking condition) and their explanatory power on the individuals’ prejudice towards the Syrian refugees. Towards this end, we conducted a survey experiment with 120 university students in May 2016. The empirical results show that while empathy evoking treatment leads to a decrease in prejudice, the threat-evoking one augments the biased attitudes towards the Syrian refugees. When the dispositional factors are included in the model, we observe that authoritarianism’s interaction with threat-evoking treatment significantly effects the prejudice levels.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)274-296
Number of pages23
JournalMarmara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilimler Dergisi = Journal of Political Science
Volume8
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Sept 2020

Bibliographical note

Title in Turkish: Türkiye’deki Suriyeli Mültecilere Yönelik Tutumların Değişkenliği
Üzerine Deneysel Bir Çalışma.

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