The polarizing impact of numeracy, economic literacy, and science literacy on attitudes toward immigration

2020/11/04 by Lucia Savadori, Savadori, Lucia, Giuseppe Espa +3
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Mathematics · Social Sciences · #Applications (stat.AP) #Climate Change Communication and Perception #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN) #Social Media and Politics #Social and Intergroup Psychology #econ.GN #q-fin.EC #stat.AP

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2011.02362

arxiv created 2020/11/04 · openalex publication_date 2020/11/04 · arxiv updated 2020/11/05 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Political orientation polarizes the attitudes of more educated individuals on controversial issues. A highly controversial issue in Europe is immigration. We found the same polarizing pattern for opinion toward immigration in a representative sample of citizens of a southern European middle-size city. Citizens with higher numeracy, scientific and economic literacy presented a more polarized view of immigration, depending on their worldview orientation. Highly knowledgeable individuals endorsing an egalitarian-communitarian worldview were more in favor of immigration, whereas highly knowledgeable individuals with a hierarchical-individualist worldview were less in favor of immigration. Those low in numerical, economic, and scientific literacy did not show a polarized attitude. Results highlight the central role of socio-political orientation over information theories in shaping attitudes toward immigration.

Citations

• Educated Preferences: Explaining Attitudes Toward Immigration in Europe
• Calibration Estimators in Survey Sampling
• Rural Environmental Concern: Effects of Position, Partisanship, and Place
• The Politicization of Climate Change and Polarization in the American Public's Views of Global Warming, 2001–2010
• The case for motivated reasoning.
• Tracking Public Beliefs About Anthropogenic Climate Change
• A Rising Tide? The Salience of Immigration and the Rise of Anti‐Immigration Political Parties in Western Europe
• Attitudes toward Refugees in Contemporary Europe: A Longitudinal Perspective on Cross-National Differences

Related

• Taking cues on multidimensional issues: the case of attitudes toward immigration
• Educated Preferences: Explaining Attitudes Toward Immigration in Europe
• Explaining Attitudes toward Immigration: The Role of Regional Context and Individual Predispositions
• Revisiting the role of education in attitudes toward immigration in different contexts in Europe
• Do voters polarise in response to elite dissensus on immigration?