Personal Threat, Collective Threat, and Discriminatory Attitudes. The Case of Foreign Workers in Israel

Abstract

Social scientists have long been interested in understanding sources and causes of discriminatory attitudes, hostility, and prejudice toward out-group populations and the mechanisms underlying the emergence of such sentiments. Consequently, a variety of alternative theoretical models have been advanced in the literature to explain why members of the majority population hold discriminatory attitudes toward out-group populations and why they are willing to deny subordinate minority groups from equal access to social, political, and economic rights (e.g., Blumer, 1958; Fetzer, 2000; Schnapper, 1994). The alternative theoretical explanations range from racism or symbolic racism to authoritarian personality, to right-wing mobilization and to competitive threat, to name but a few (for a detailed discussion of the alternative theoretical models, see Wimmer, 1997). Although these alternative explanations are not necessarily contradictory or mutually exclusive, each emphasizes a different mechanism underlying the emergence of prejudice, discrimination, and hostility, and each has received some empirical confirmation and support.