Global Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The relationship between intercultural personality traits and xenophobia in Italy and Germany: A comparative study

Petia Genkova, Christoph Daniel Schafer, Elise Bonacina

Xenophobic tendencies in a receiving society constitute challenging obstacles for the opportunities of refugees and
other immigrants. The present study examined the relationships between identifications with social groups and
xenophobic attitudes. In particular, it tested whether national identification, ethnic identification, superordinate
identification and dual identification are associated with xenophobia, employing a German and an Italian sample.
We anticipated and found that ethnic identity tends to be positively related to xenophobia, while dual identification
is negatively related to xenophobia. This pattern suggests that especially ethnic identification can function as a marker
for the accentuation of intra-societal differences, while dual identification is likely to indicate a more inclusive value
orientation. The results also demonstrated that there was no measurement invariance between the German and the
Italian sample, suggesting that the connotations of the items are likely to differ between the two cultural contexts,
indicating that the cross-cultural applicability cannot be taken for granted even in case of widely established scales.

Published Date: 2021-05-19; Received Date: 2021-04-26