Previous research indicates that dispositional worry about potential threats is associated with greater ingroup biases. However, the nature of this relationship within minority cultural groups, and the specificity of which threats matter most for this relationship, remain poorly understood. The current study thus aimed to build on existing work in three key ways: by simultaneously examining the effects of threat in both a mainstream and an immigrant population, by examining associations between threats and cultural practices and real-life interactions, and by addressing whether concerns about disease threats or physical threats were more robust predictors. Thus, we investigated the relative influence of physical- and disease-threat concerns for acculturation and ingroup preferences in both immigrant and non-immigrant Americans (N = 964, 171 immigrants). Immigrant Americans completed an acculturation survey in which their engagement with their heritage culture was compared with their engagement with mainstream American culture. Meanwhile, non-immigrant Americans responded to similar items assessing their engagement with US versus foreign cultural practices. Results indicated that dispositional worry about physical threats was associated with lower acculturation in immigrant participants, and lower engagement with foreign cultures in non-immigrant Americans. Further, in the combined sample, participants who were more concerned about physical threats were less likely to have had a romantic partner of a different ethnicity than their own. By contrast, dispositional worry about disease threat did not reliably predict cultural engagement or partner choice. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that physical-threat concern leads to less engagement with foreign cultures.
