Racialized Empathy and Attitudes Toward Refugees in the United States

Abstract In the United States, the public does not view all refugee groups with equal favorability. Why do individuals express more support for some refugee groups compared to others? We argue that some Americans are more supportive of certain refugee groups when they share a racial identity because it is easier for them to empathize with them. While recent research points to empathy as a useful tool for cultivating supportive attitudes toward refugees and immigrants, the political science literature lacks a nuanced understanding of the conditions under which empathy drives pro-social attitudes toward refugees, specifically with regard to racial dynamics. Does empathy allow people to overcome their racial ingroup preferences, or does it magnify them? With an original web experiment administered to a 50/50 Black and white sample of Americans, we prime half of the sample to associate refugees with their racial ingroup and prime the other half with their racial outgroup. We find that refugee race only affects support for refugees among white individuals with low group empathy. For high-empathy whites and Blacks of all levels of empathy, the race linked to refugees does not condition their support for refugees. Rather, group empathy is a strong, independent explanation for variation in attitudes toward refugees. We also find modest evidence that the positive association between empathy for refugees and support for this group is driven by partisanship, particularly for whites. The direct effect of partisanship on support for refugees is much stronger. This study contributes to research on the dynamics of race, empathy, and attitudes toward refugees.