Political ideology, perceived threat, and justice towards immigrants

In multiethnic societies, issues of justice and fairness have become the focus of intense public debate. Although current psychological theories of distributive and procedural justice concentrate on multiple normative rules that guide allocation decisions, there is little research that focuses on the particular relationship between immigrants as recipients and members of the host society as allocators. In the present study Germans were asked about their opinions as to what Turkish immigrants in Germany deserve or are entitled to and to which degree they pose a threat to German culture. Political orientation of the allocator turns out to be an important predictor of how distributive and procedural justice concerns are evaluated. Both conservatives and liberals exhibit a different conception of what counts as distributive justice. With regard to procedural justice, however, liberals and conservatives did not differ much. Moreover, perceived threat to German culture is significantly related to distributive justice but not to procedural justice. © 2002 Plenum Publishing Corporation.