What mitigates prejudice against migrants in situations of uncertainty? Addressing this question, we explored how individuals with greater COVID-19 concern perceive migrants as a greater threat and show prejudice against them, indirectly through the mechanism of need for cognitive closure and binding moral foundations. This study was conducted in two European countries: Malta and Italy. Six hundred and seventy-six individuals participated in this quantitative study (Malta: N = 204; Italy N = 472). Results from this study showed that the need for cognitive closure and binding moral foundations mediate the relationship between COVID-19 concern and prejudice against migrants in both countries. When testing the three binding moral foundations (loyalty, authority, and purity), the authority foundation seems to be the most consistent predictor. The implications of the findings contribute to theories about how situational uncertainty caused by COVID-19, together with the need for epistemic certainty and binding morality, contribute to increased prejudiced attitudes against migrants.

In this study we first examine how host nationals (i.e., Italians) categorize immigrants; second, we look into the roles played by estimation of size and composition of immigrant population, perceived threat, prejudice, and need for cognitive closure in that process. In the first part of the study, participants responded to questionnaires measuring the variables just mentioned, including an estimation of which immigrant group was the largest in Italy. In the second part of the study, 96 photographs of male faces from 16 immigrant groups were shown to participants (N = 195). They were asked to identify the country of origin of each person in the photographs. Results showed that perceived threat enhanced the effect of prejudice and need for cognitive closure in the process of ethnic categorization. Individuals with a high need for cognitive closure and prejudice toward ethnic groups classified more immigrants as members of the group estimated as being the largest in their country when they perceived immigrants as a threat. The implications of outgroup overclassification for prejudice against immigrants are discussed.

Environmental sustainability depends highly on our ability to identify the determinants of various types of pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs). However, so far, public sphere pro-environmental behaviours (PBS-PEBs) have received little attention in the scientific literature. This paper aims thus to fill this gap by exploring the role of dispositional (i.e., social anxiety and self-efficacy) and social psychological factors (i.e., environmental concern and global warming awareness) in the prediction of PBS-PEBs. An online questionnaire, including measures of these factors, was administered to residents (N = 199) of various Italian cities. The results indicated that (1) dispositional social anxiety (but not self-efficacy) directly (and negatively) predicts PBS-PEBs and that its effect is comparable to that of the social psychological factors considered (environmental concern and global warming awareness); (2) global warming awareness (positively) predicts PBS-PEBs directly, while (3) environmental concern, measured through the NEP scale, does it indirectly. Implications of the results for modelling the role of dispositional anxiety, environmental concern and global warming awareness in studies on PBS-PEBs are briefly outlined.

As immigration is one of the dominant issues in contemporary public discourse, it is important to explain the mechanism of prejudice against immigrants from a cultural psychology perspective. Several studies in the literature have confirmed a significant relationship between perceptions of the estimated size of the immigrant population and negative attitudes towards them. This study aims to investigate whether this relationship is moderated by symbolic universes, i.e., affect-laden generalized worldviews. The study involves a representative sample of 3020 Italians who participated in a computer-assisted web survey and completed a questionnaire containing items measuring their estimates of the size of the migrant population in Italy, political orientation, cultural worldviews (symbolic universes), and the perceived threat posed by migrants. The results confirm that the relationship between the estimated size of the migrant population and the perceived threat is moderated by symbolic universes, being stronger for participants who hold both pessimistic and idealizing symbolic universes. The results are interpreted within the framework of semiotic cultural psychology theory.