Terrorist threat and perceived Islamic support for terrorist attacks as predictors of personal and institutional out-group discrimination and support for anti-immigration policies: evidence from 9 European countries

Traditionally, research has shown that subtle and blatant prejudices are important predictors of out-group discrimination and support for anti-immigration policies. The present paper shows that, when controlling for these types of prejudices and for political conservatism, terrorist threat and perceived Islamic support for terrorism are related to such negative out-group treatment as well. We conducted survey-interviews with a random selection of a representative sample of 775 women and 634 men (age range 16-91 years) from 9 different European countries. Across this sample, we first demonstrate that terrorist threat and perceived support for terrorism by Muslims directly and uniquely can predict more personal discrimination of Muslims, higher approval of institutional discrimination against Muslims, and higher endorsement of strict anti-immigration policies. In addition, we show the indirect effects of terrorist threat and perceived support for terrorism by Muslims because they predict traditional determinants of negative out-group treatment (i.e., both subtle and blatant prejudices). Results are discussed in terms of the unique role of terrorist threat and perceived Islamic support for terrorism in relation to traditional prejudices, as determinants of negative out-group treatment.