{"pk":49460,"title":"Reducing Negative Attitudes Towards Immigrants – The Role of Prior Attitudes and Argument Style","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments have been increasing in Western democratic countries, and it is important to understand how messaging can improve attitudes towards immigrants. Past studies show prior attitudes are associated with how individuals evaluate related arguments. The present study (N = 349) explores if people's prior attitudes influence how they evaluate the strength of arguments in the context of immigration. We also test whether the style of argument (i.e., narrative or statistical) influences argument evaluation. We measured participants' attitudes towards immigrants before and after an argument evaluation task, where participants rated the quality of a narrative and statistical argument.  Participants with high pre-existing negative attitudes towards immigrants rated pro-immigrant arguments poorly and anti-immigrant arguments strongly, and we see the opposite relationship for participants with pre-existing positive attitudes towards immigrants.  Our findings demonstrate that people can evaluate the same arguments about immigrants very differently depending on their pre-existing attitudes and that argument style can affect argument evaluation.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Other; Reasoning; Statistics"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7qd635q6","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Sayeh","middle_name":"","last_name":"Yousefi","name_suffix":"","institution":"London School of Economics and Political Science","department":""},{"first_name":"Calvin","middle_name":"Christopher James Lee","last_name":"Deans-Browne","name_suffix":"","institution":"University College London","department":""},{"first_name":"Carolin","middle_name":"","last_name":"Echterbeck","name_suffix":"","institution":"University College London","department":""},{"first_name":"Jens","middle_name":"Koed","last_name":"Madsen","name_suffix":"","institution":"London School of Economics","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49460/galley/37422/download/"}]}