In response to the Ebola scare in 2014, many people evinced strong fear and xenophobia. The present study, informed by the pathogen-prevalence hypothesis, tested the influence of individualism and collectivism on xenophobic response to the threat of Ebola. A nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans completed a survey, indicating their perceptions of their vulnerability to Ebola, ability to protect themselves from Ebola (protection efficacy), and xenophobic tendencies. Overall, the more vulnerable people felt, the more they exhibited xenophobic responses, but this relationship was moderated by individualism and collectivism. The increase in xenophobia associated with increased vulnerability was especially pronounced among people with high individualism scores and those with low collectivism scores. These relationships were mediated by protection efficacy. State-level collectivism had the same moderating effect on the association between perceived vulnerability and xenophobia that individual-level value orientation did. Collectivism—and the set of practices and rituals associated with collectivistic cultures—may serve as psychological protection against the threat of disease.
BursonA.CrockerJ.MischkowskiD. (2012). Two types of value-affirmation: Implications for self-control following social exclusion. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 3, 510–516.
FaulknerJ.SchallerM.ParkJ. H.DuncanL. A. (2004). Evolved disease-avoidance mechanisms and contemporary xenophobic attitudes. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7, 333–353.
9.
FincherC. L.ThornhillR.MurrayD. R.SchallerM. (2008). Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 275, 1279–1285.
10.
HaidtJ. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York, NY: Vintage.
11.
Harmon-JonesE.SimonL.GreenbergJ.PyszczynskiT.SolomonS.McGregorH. (1997). Terror management theory and self-esteem: Evidence that increased self-esteem reduced mortality salience effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 24–36.
12.
HarringtonJ. R.GelfandM. J. (2014). Tightness–looseness across the 50 United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 111, 7990–7995.
13.
HowellJ. L.ShepperdJ. A. (2012). Reducing information avoidance through affirmation. Psychological Science, 23, 141–145.
14.
Institute of Medicine Forum on Microbial Threats. (2009). 5: Infectious disease emergence: Past, present, and future. In Microbial evolution and co-adaptation: A tribute to the life and scientific legacies of Joshua Lederberg: Workshop summary. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK45714/
15.
KimH.MarkusH. R. (1999). Deviance or uniqueness, harmony or conformity? A cultural analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 785–800.
16.
KitayamaS. (2002). Culture and basic psychological processes—toward a system view of culture: Comment on Oyserman et al. (2002). Psychological Bulletin, 128, 89–96.
LazarusR. S.FolkmanS. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. New York, NY: Springer.
19.
LibermanA.ChaikenS. (1992). Defensive processing of personally relevant health messages. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 669–679.
20.
MadduxJ. E.RogersR. W. (1983). Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory of fear appeals and attitude change. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 469–479.
21.
MurrayD. R.SchallerM.SuedfeldP. (2013). Pathogens and politics: Further evidence that parasite prevalence predicts authoritarianism. PLoS ONE, 8(5), Article e62275. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062275
22.
MurrayD. R.TrudeauR.SchallerM. (2011). On the origins of cultural differences in conformity: Four tests of the pathogen prevalence hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 318–329.
23.
NapperL. E.FisherD. G.ReynoldsG. L. (2012). Development of the perceived risk of HIV scale. AIDS and Behavior, 16, 1075–1083.
24.
NavarreteC. D.FesslerD. M. (2006). Disease avoidance and ethnocentrism: The effects of disease vulnerability and disgust sensitivity on intergroup attitudes. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27, 270–282.
25.
NeuliepJ. W.McCroskeyJ. C. (1997). The development of a U.S. and generalized ethnocentrism scale. Communication Research Reports, 14, 385–398.
OysermanD.CoonH.KemmelmeierM. (2002). Rethinking individualism and collectivism: Evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 3–73.
28.
OysermanD.LaufferA. (2002). Examining the implications of cultural frames on social movements and group action. In NewmanL.ErberR. (Eds.), What social psychology can tell us about the Holocaust: Understanding the perpetrators of genocide (pp. 162–187). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
29.
RogersR. W.Prentice-DunnS. (1997). Protection motivation theory. In GochmanD. S. (Ed.), Handbook of health behavior research I: Personal and social determinants (pp. 113–132). New York, NY: Plenum Press.
30.
RossL.GreeneD.HouseP. (1977). The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 279–301.
31.
SchallerM.MurrayD. R.BangerterA. (2015). Implications of the behavioural immune system for social behaviour and human health in the modern world. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 370, Article 105. doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0105
32.
ShermanD. A. K.NelsonL. D.SteeleC. M. (2000). Do messages about health risks threaten the self? Increasing the acceptance of threatening health messages via self-affirmation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 1046–1058.
33.
ShermanD. K.BunyanD. P.CreswellJ. D.JaremkaL. M. (2009). Psychological vulnerability and stress: The effects of self-affirmation on sympathetic nervous system responses to naturalistic stressors. Health Psychology, 28, 554–562.
34.
ShermanD. K.CohenG. L. (2006). The psychology of self-defense: Self-affirmation theory. In ZannaM. P. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 38, pp. 183–242). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
35.
ShnabelN.Purdie-VaughnsV.CookJ. E.GarciaJ.CohenG. L. (2013). Demystifying values-affirmation interventions: Writing about social belonging is a key to buffering against identity threat. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 663–676.
36.
SingelisT. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-construals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 580–591.
37.
StephanW. G.YbarraO.MartnezC. M.SchwarzwaldJ.Tur-KaspaM. (1998). Prejudice toward immigrants to Spain and Israel: An integrated threat theory analysis. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 29, 559–576.
38.
TalhelmT.HaidtJ.OishiS.ZhangX.MiaoF. F.ChenS. (2015). Liberals think more analytically (more “WEIRD”) than conservatives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41, 250–267.
39.
TriandisH. C. (1989). The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts. Psychological Review, 96, 506–520.
40.
TriandisH. C. (1996). The psychological measurement of cultural syndromes. American Psychologist, 51, 407–415.
41.
TriandisH. C.GelfandM. J. (1998). Converging measurement of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 118–128.
VandelloJ. A.CohenD. (1999). Patterns of individualism and collectivism across the United States. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 279–292.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
