Measuring and Countering Prejudice between Ethnic Groups

• Applicant: Daniel Müller, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: from 2022 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 503659594

In this proposal, we lay out plans to (i) comprehensively measure discrimination against refugees in Austria and Germany using nation-wide field experiments, (ii) elicit implicit and explicit bias against refugees using representative survey and lab-in-the-field experiments and (iii) and assess the potential of de-biasing strategies to reduce discrimination and prejudice. The current proposal builds on an existing project in which we compiled a nation-wide experimental index of discrimination against refugees at the community level in Austria. We have done so by conducting a field experiment in which we sent out around 25,000 standardized e-mails to private and public institutions, randomizing the name of the sender as either local or foreign. We use differences in response rates at the community level to construct a nation-wide index of discrimination. The strength of this field experimental measurement of discrimination is that it is elicited in a natural, yet at the same time tightly experimentally controlled, context. In the first pillar of this proposal, we propose to extend this index to Germany and thus lay the foundation for a larger database on discrimination.The second pillar consists of survey and lab-in-the-field experiments, administered in both countries, which measure explicit and implicit biases against refugees. In addition, we will include modules to assess stated beliefs and attitudes towards refugees in more general. In particular, we plan to elicit beliefs about the country of origin, religious and educational background of refugees, their number and the propensity of criminal activities of refugees and we will also measure general attitudes towards them (i.e., whether they are perceived as a burden or as a gain). These data will be geo-coded and merged to the revealed (e-mail) measure of discrimination and to a large battery of socio-economic covariates and other background characteristics. Among others, we will also link data on the allocation of refugees to our data to estimate the effect of exposure and contact to refugees on discrimination. Such an approach allows for the testing the “Contact Hypothesis” (CH) originally proposed Allport (1954). The main idea is that contact between groups can, under certain conditions, reduce prejudice and hostility.In the third pillar of this proposal, we aim to test the effectiveness of de-biasing interventions in the reduction of discrimination and prejudice. In these interventions, we expose subjects to information about their own biases. These information treatments allow us to study the causal effect of beliefs and evaluate whether de-biasing beliefs could potentially contribute to the mitigation of anti-refugee sentiments.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Austria
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Elisabeth Gsottbauer, Ph.D.