ABSTRACT
Objective
Prejudice, which disregards basic human rights and threatens the culture of living together, is a widespread social problem encountered all over the world and is the source of discrimination and hate crimes. In order to struggle the social problems created by prejudice toward immigrants, which has reached serious levels worldwide, it is important to understand the conditions that lead to the development and maintenance of prejudice. So, the current study aims to reveal the factors that predict the prejudice of citizens of the Republic of Turkey toward Syrian immigrants.
Methods
The sample consists of 461 people aged 18/over from different social segments of Istanbul and Hatay provinces. The level of predictive power of the social dominance orientation, the group identification, the integrated threat theory and the intergroup contact scales on prejudice toward immigrants was determined by using hierarchical regression analysis.
Results
Upon evaluating the statistical data from the scales, it was found that the mean perception of realistic threat in the Istanbul sample (x̅=41.28) was significantly lower than in the Hatay sample (x̅=45.06), with a statistically significant difference [t(458)=4.713, p<0.001]. Similarly, the symbolic threat perception in the Istanbul sample (x̅=41.22) was also significantly lower than in the Hatay sample (x̅=43.42) [t(457)=2.819, p<0.01]. The strongest predictors of prejudice against immigrants were identified as intergroup anxiety and the positivity of intergroup contact. Across all threat perception scales, Hatay, a border province, exhibited higher scores. This suggests that the predictors of prejudice are more closely linked to social factors than to individual traits.
Conclusion
Considering that unavoidable prejudices can lead to discrimination and hate crimes toward immigrants, which can turn into legal cases and cause widespread negative social consequences, it is underlined that a large-scale struggle that can function at the societal level to reduce prejudice is necessary.
