Space-focused stereotypes of immigrant neighbourhoods.

Recent research suggests that stereotypes are not only applied to social groups but also to the physical spaces that social groups inhabit. We present three experiments investigating space-focused stereotype content and valence regarding immigrant and non-immigrant neighbourhoods. In Study 1a (N = 198), a pre-registered online experiment, we observed that participants associate more negative characteristics with immigrant neighbourhoods than with middle-class neighbourhoods. Whereas they imagined immigrant neighbourhoods as crime-ridden, dirty and dangerous, they imagined middle-class neighbourhoods to be quiet, clean and safe. Furthermore, whereas stereotype valence regarding immigrant neighbourhoods was negative, stereotype valence regarding middle-class neighbourhoods was positive, suggesting large effects. These results were replicated in Study 1b (N = 274), examining stereotypes of immigrant versus majority-German neighbourhoods. In Study 2 (N = 209), a pre-registered online experiment, we observed that space-focused stereotypes were more negative when cultural stereotypes rather than personal beliefs were assessed. Exploratory analyses revealed that, compared with majority-German neighbourhoods, participants imagined immigrant neighbourhoods to be lower in socioeconomic status and also reported feeling less psychologically connected to these neighbourhoods, regardless of whether space-focused stereotypes were personally endorsed or not. Lastly, a mega-analysis across studies suggested that effects of stereotypes of immigrant in comparison to non-immigrant places were very large (ds = 1.70). Together, the present findings indicate that mere differences in descriptions of places with reference to their demographic composition are sufficient to elicit large differences in associated stereotype content and valence.

Measuring Attributions 50 Years on: From within-Country Poverty to Global Inequality.

Fifty years after Feagin's pioneering 1972 study, we present a systematic review of the measurement of attributions for poverty and economic inequality. We conducted a search for articles published from 1972 to 2023 in APA PsycArticles, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, APA PsycInfo, PSYNDEX Literature with PSYNDEX Tests, and Google Scholar. We used the following English keywords: "poor", "poverty", "inequality", "attribution", and "attributions" and their equivalents in Spanish. Applying our inclusion and exclusion criteria led to a final sample of 74 articles. We report three main findings. First, the majority of studies classify attributions on the dimensions of individualistic vs. structural. Second, there is a clear tendency to measure attributions for domestic poverty without considering supranational factors or poverty as a global challenge. Third, studies focus almost exclusively on poverty rather than (economic) inequality. We identify potential for future development within the literature, namely, from a domestic to a global perspective, from locus to controllability, and from poverty to inequality.