RICERCA ITALIANA     

Representations of foreigners and their influence on interethnic relationships: cognitive bases, social dynamics, cultural differences.

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

Abstract

This project addresses the individual, social and political representations of foreigners and the birth, development, and spreading of xenophobic thought from a cognitive, psychosocial, and sociological perspective. Accordingly, it is a multi-level project, and we will try to manage the complexity that is intrinsic in understanding micro-macrolevel interactions by capitalizing on system dytnamics' theoretical tools and software, and on computational simulations of society. Beyond its theoretical scope, the project has a practical operational value: whilst the first unit is mostly theoretical, the second and third units will also apply innovative tools and approaches in order to develop effetive actions for enhancing inclusion and reducing interethnic conflicts in contemporary Italy, and for devising practical guidelines to design similar actions in the future. <<<

Principal Investigator

Paolo Cherubini Università degli Studi di MILANO-BICOCCA

Research Objectives

This research program deals with how foreigners are represented in Italian society and aims to develop a multidisciplinary and multilevel analysis which is original, innovative, and integrates the most recent developments in cognitive science, social psychology, community psychology and sociology. We believe that only an integrated approach is capable of illustrating the complex relationships between the micro-level (i.e. individual representations) and the macro-level (i.e. social and cultural representations). Although our scientific objective is two-fold (on the one hand to shed light on the cognitive and social genesis of cultural differences connoting ethnic groups in their dealings with one another, and on the other hand to develop a new methodology for a multilevel analysis), the operational objective consists in developing tools which can be used to identify strategies promoting social inclusion and intercultural learning processes.
The importance of these matters clearly emerges for various reasons:
a) Firstly, the European political space which is organized on the basis of geographical territory (a system of Nation-States, each with its own borders) has always implied attributing sovereignty to specific ethno-political groups thanks to the creation of internally homogeneous (or presumed such) national identities, and establishing the necessary criteria in order to define the most exclusive form of belonging, i.e. that of citizenship (Donnan &amp; Wilsen, 1995). This issue is the reason why it is often difficult to distinguish between forms of citizenship defined according to political and legal criteria, from those based on ethnic or cultural elements, as shown by current policies regarding the naturalization of ‘immigrants’. Within this particular framework, ‘Others’ (i.e. foreigners) are viewed as ‘different’ and, in many cases, as ‘outsiders’ or even as ‘enemies’ (Savic, 2005). The meanings associated with this ‘foreigner’ figure, intended not only as a legal category but also as a political category, gravitate around the notions of ‘strangeness’ and ‘non-belonging’ to the national community. In this sense, the term ‘foreigner’ is characterized by its very lack of referential determination: it loosely applies to immigrants, refugees, stateless people, and ethnic minorities indiscriminately.
b) Secondly, in recent years the numbers of foreigners present in our country has continued to rise steadily. In line with what has been happening in almost all of Europe – with obvious differences which are specific to each individual country – Italy now has a considerable share of foreign citizens, and this continually poses new questions regarding the individual, interpersonal, organizational and institutional understanding, interpretation and analysis of its various forms, developments and consequences. Between the 1991 and 2001 censuses, the number of foreign nationals was three times higher, going from 356,000 to more than 1 million. More recent statistics indicate that this tendency is progressively consolidating: following the latest legalization of illegal immigrants, which was made possible by Laws N° 189/02 (the so-called “Bossi-Fini law”) and N° 195/02 (implemented by early 2003), the number of legal immigrants reached 2,600,000 in early 2004 (Caritas, 2004). From many indicators, it may be argued that immigration is now a substantial and consolidated phenomenon, enough so that it now constitutes a structural aspect of Italian society rather than a simple contingent element (ISMU, 2004). Since this is a fairly recent phenomenon in Italy, it has so far been studied very little, not so much in its structural aspects, which are of sociological, political and legal interest – these being the main contexts in which it has so far been researched, even internationally (IMISCOE 2004) – but rather with respect to those aspects that are more strictly linked to the psychosocial sphere. In such a framework, the question of how foreigners are perceived and portrayed can be considered a key element for understanding the complex dynamics that are typical of relations between different ethnic and cultural groups.

c) Thirdly, the spread of certain forms of xenophobia – either explicit or implicit – is being more and more documented in international research studies, both in relation to the emergence of social and political movements assuming an anti-immigrant stance, and, more generally, in relation to the sharing of such a stance on the part of the general European public (for an analysis of these phenomena in France and Sweden, see Rydgren, 2003 &amp; 2004). In such a context, it becomes necessary to clearly define the links between the notions of ‘xenophobia’ and ‘racism’ as they are traditionally understood, and particularly the links between what has been defined as ‘cultural racism’ (Barker, 1981; Wievorka, 1998), or ‘differential racism’ (Taguieff, 1988), and xenophobic beliefs. This shift from ‘biological’ to ‘cultural’ racism is based on the idea that cultural differences between different ethnic groups make them incompatible, which leads us to the notion of ‘ethno-pluralism’ (as opposed to that of ‘multiculturalism’), meaning different ethnic groups must be kept separate in order to preserve national identity.

From this general picture, it is obvious that the focus of our study touches on multiple fields of research (cognitive psychology, social psychology, community psychology, sociology) and that it is well suited to opening new innovative perspectives that will enable us to propose a more articulate view of certain phenomena which are only rarely integrated in research studies. Within the perspective we intend to develop, the aims of the program can be defined as follows:

a) Firstly, an empirical and theoretical model will be developed, with an appropriate computational simulation, on how individuals derive their notion of ‘foreigner’. We will also evaluate the relative role played by many cognitive mechanisms in perceiving risk, identifying correlations and illusory causal links, as well as setting these into individual cognitive schemas. Such mechanisms can in themselves justify, either in part or completely, the co-called ‘subjective rationality’ of xenophobic ideas (that is, the well-rooted conviction that some such ideas are plausible and individually adaptive, or at least that they are the normal product of prudent caution when evaluating the costs and benefits of social interaction). We will probe their effective role and explanatory power, both in terms of generating or welcoming xenophobic convictions and in terms of supporting argumentative strategies aimed at spreading xenophobic ideas.
b) Secondly, we will provide an in-depth analysis regarding the circular relationship between individual representations and shared representations, with particular emphasis on the ‘normalization’ of the contents and spread of xenophobic beliefs, as well as their legitimizing and actualization through the media and the influence exerted by political discourse.
c) Thirdly, starting from the categorization processes activated when meeting these ‘Others’ and from the consequent definition and negotiation of collective identities, we will examine strategies which, through social action, could promote processes of social inclusion and mutual acceptance between different ethnic and cultural groups within various territorial contexts. By ‘local community’, we mean the actual, concrete context in which problems and social relations assume specific form and, as such, can be noted and analyzed.
d) Finally, we will analyze intercultural learning processes through which experiencing differences is worked out according to criteria of increasing complexity, including the three main levels of learning: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Our theoretical framework involve contributions from different research fields (cognitive psychology, social psychology, community psychology, sociology and cognitive science).

With respect to cognitive psychology, the relevant scientific literature includes studies on:
a) Inductive thinking, specifically the reasoning mechanisms behind the generation of hypotheses, and the apportionment of a-priori support to them. Of particular concern is the literature on associative learning (e.g. Cheng e Novick, 1992; Shanks, 1995), with specific attention to inductions based on a single instance (Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett, and Thagard, 1986); the literature on illusory correlations, including those caused by sampling biases (e.g. Fiedler, 2000), faulty encoding of incoming information (e.g. Hamilton, Dougan,and Troiler, 1985), errors in evaluating the support approtioned by each piece of evidence (e.g. Mandel and Lehman, 1998), or pre-existing beliefs (e.g. Chapman e Chapman, 1969); the literature on human sensitivity to the information content of a set of data (e.g. Cherubini, Castelvecchio, and Cherubini, 2005).
b) Hypothesis-testing and belief-revision strategies, with a specific focus on the different components of confirmation biases (Nickerson, 2002): i.e., the unwillingness to seek falsificatory evidence (e.g. Wason, 1960); the positive-testing strategy (e.g. Klayman and Ha, 1987); the tendency to take ambiguous evidence as confirming evidence (Ross and Anderson, 1982); the tendency to overweigh confirming evidence (Pyszczynski and Greenberg, 1987; Fischhoff and Beyth-Marom, 1983).
c) Deductive thinking, with a specific interest in the development of “mechanic”, rigid, domain-specific thinking schemata (Cheng and Holyoak, 1985; Cherubini and Mazzocco, 2004); belief bias, i.e. the tendency to take as valid those conclusions that comply with our previous beliefs (and vice-versa; e.g. Morley, Evans, and Handley, 2004; Cherubini, Garnham, Oakhill, and Morley, 1998); “focusing”, i.e. the systematic tendency to build a single mental representation of a given situations, even where available data would allow for the buiding of alternative representations (Legrenzi, Girotto, and Johnson-Laird, 1993).
d) Within the judgement and decision making literature (e.g. Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky, 1982), of particular interest are the studies showing how we ignore crucial information in our judgments (e.g., base-rate probabilities of events), and vice-versa anchor them to normatively irrelevant information (e.g., availability of examples); the studies on the changing attitudes toward risk in different contexts (e.g. Kahneman and Tversky, 1979); the studies on the psychological factors that affect the perception of risks (e.g. Sjöberg, 2000).

Additionally, we will analyze those studies that already attempted to generalize to the social domain some of the thinking mechanisms discovered in the lab. These studies are usually referred to as "social cognition", a wide label that encompasses very different sorts of studies, not all of them relevant to our purposes. A nice introduction to social cognition is Nisbett and Ross, 1980.

In the domain of cognitive science, starting from Holland’s pioneering models (1975) we will analyze all the main attempts to understand society by computationally simulating its possible origins. Actually, the birth of society cannot be experimentally investigated, nor can it be directly observed by anthropologists. This notwithstanding, understanding the genesis of society is necessary in order to understand its current status and internal dynamics. Arguably, the only viable scientific method to accomplish this endeavour is computational modelling. Many models, involving quite different theoretical assumptions, have already been developed, suggesting that this avenue of research is quite promising (e.g. Conte and Castelfranchi, 1995; Epstein and Axtell, 1996; Read and Miller, 1998)


With respect to social and community psychology, the relevant scientific literature includes:
a) studies on cultural diversity investigating the influence of affective factors (e.g. symbolic and concrete sense of threat) on the acceptance of cultural diversity and on the quality of intergroup relations (Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears and Doosje, 1999; Florack, Herbert Bless, and Piontowsky, 2003); studies focusing on the relationship between intergroup contact and acculturation strategies, grounded on the ‘contact hypothesis’ (Allport, 1954) and its developments: a) the intergroup perspective on the ‘contact hypothesis’(Hewstone and Brown, 1986); b) the decategorization perspective (Brewer and Miller, 1984); c) The Common Ingroup Identity Model (Gaertner and Dovidio, 2005).
b) studies on intergroup reations (cfr. Abrams, Hogg, and Marques, 2005), examining the role of prejudice and stereotypes on the relationships among groups different for culture, religion, and/or ethnic origin. Status differences associated to prejudice and the legitimation of social hierarchy are considered (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999), as well as social identity and self-categorization (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, Wetherell, 1987), and political ideology (e.g, Arcuri and Boca, 1996). In this domain, subtle and blatant prejudice (Pettigrew &amp; Meertens, 1995) and aversive racism (Dovidio &amp; Gaertner, 1998) are examined;
c) studies on social identity recently developed within Social Identity Theory (SIT) framework, which explain how multiple belonging (membership) and reciprocal multiple identifications are created. Social identity is regarded as a cognitive structure that mediates the relationship between the environment and social behaviour (Brown &amp; Zagefka, 2005).
A relevant theoretical proposal has been made in the form of the Common Ingroup Identity Model (Gaertner, Dovidio, 2000, 2005), according to which conflictuality between groups can be decreased by extracting a common superordinate to both groups, thus enabling their members to identify common elements between the groups.
d) social representations theory, that allows us to analyse how attitudes, stereotypes, prejudice and beliefs are linked to socially- and culturally-shared systems of knowledge (Moscovici, 1984). The social knowledge shared by different groups includes the social representation of the ‘other’, thus contributing to the social construction of reality.
e) discourse-oriented studies examining the diffusion of overt and covert forms of xenophobia, their legitimation, and naturalization (see Wetherell &amp; Potter, 1992; Tileaga, 2006). The structure and function of xenophobic is described (Reisigl &amp; Wodak, 2001), as well as its spreading by way of the media (van Dijk, 1991; Wodak &amp; Matouuscheck, 1993), and its semantic organization in political discourse (Van Dijk, 1997; Van der Valk, 2003).
f) studies on the psychological sense of community (Mc Millan &amp; Chavis 1986), specifically those that recently focused on social trust, belonging and identity (Fisher, 2002; Arcidiacono, 2006);
g) studies on intercultural learning, with respect to the developmental model of intercultural sensibility (Bennett, 1993), that accounts for the evolution from ethnocentric to ethnorelative phases typical of different social representations of reality. <<<