An authoritarianism-compatible text changes British attitudes towards EU immigration

Abstract

Immigration was a major point of contention for voters in 2024, a record year for elections. Here we test whether British attitudes towards immigration become more positive when participants are exposed to a framed text. In the study (n = 3067), which uses a sample sourced from YouGov that is representative for age, education, gender and politics, participants are exposed to a short text written to be compatible with moderate levels of what political psychologists call ‘authoritarianism’ that also incorporates factual arguments and an emotional appeal. We find that people exposed to this text as opposed to a control text or a low authoritarianism text feel they share more values with a fictitious EU immigrant, and are more positive towards EU immigration. There are also differences in overall immigration attitudes after reading the authoritarianism-compatible text relative to the control, but these are smaller, and do not differ significantly from the low authoritarianism text. These findings demonstrate that persuasion is possible on contentious issues like immigration, and are consistent with the idea that authoritarianism-compatible arguments might be particularly effective for culturally similar forms of immigration (such as EU immigration to the UK).