Scapegoating Immigrants in Times of Personal and Collective Crises: Results from a Czech Panel Study

Abstract

According to scapegoat theory, individuals tend to attribute personal or social problems to an out-group (real or imagined). This self-serving bias protects the ego or social identity from responsibility while increasing prejudice towards the out-group blamed for feelings of frustration. In this research note, we test this theory using five waves of the Czech Household Panel Study (CHPS 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), which captures the tail end of the 2015–2016 refugee crisis in Europe through the lockdown in response to COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We focus attention on both personal and professional domains, asking if factors like subjective health, work stress, relationship dissatisfaction, life dissatisfaction, and unhappiness contribute to attitudes towards immigrants over time. We also ask whether socio-political attitudes such as distrust in the government, social distrust, and political disinterest are associated with changes in anti-immigrant sentiment. Results show that personal and professional domains help explain between-individual differences in attitudes towards immigrants, while trust in the government and society are related to both within-individual change and between-individual differences in anti-immigrant sentiment.