Navigating ideological pathways: an interactive predispositions model of pro-immigration attitudes in Europe

What motivates people to hold liberal or conservative policy preferences? Following an interactive interpretation of the dual process model of ideology, we examine how Europeans’ value-based predispositions interact to predict their immigration-policy preferences. We conduct three sets of analyses. First, we establish whether there is an association between predispositions and immigration preferences in all countries in the first ten rounds of the European Social Survey. Second, we investigate whether the patterns we observe in the first two sets of analyses carry over to a set of immigration-policy preferences asked about in rounds 1, 4, 7, and 8. In line with previous research, we find that more accepting and open immigration-policy preferences require both altruistic and libertarian predispositions. However, more restrictive and exclusive immigration-policy preferences can result from either an egoistic (vs. altruistic) predisposition or an authoritarian (vs. libertarian) predisposition, with egoistic predispositions exerting the strongest impact.