New research has found that individuals who frequently use social media and perceive immigrants as threats are more likely to harbor negative emotions toward them. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, indicates that these effects are stronger among those with lower cognitive abilities. In contrast, individuals with higher cognitive abilities were less prone to these negative attitudes, suggesting that cognitive ability may offer some protection against emotionally charged narratives on social media.
A significant motivation behind the study was to explore how the public’s use of social media contributes to emotional and cognitive responses toward immigrants. Prior studies have shown that social media can amplify both negative and positive sentiments, but the exact pathways through which this happens—especially concerning cognitive ability—have remained unclear. The researchers also wanted to explore the role of perceived threats, such as economic or cultural displacement, which have long been shown to foster prejudice and xenophobia.
To examine how immigrants are discussed in public discourse on social media, the researchers conducted a computational text analysis of social media posts from Singapore, focusing on online communities where people freely express their thoughts and emotions. They collected posts and comments from several popular platforms, including Facebook and Reddit, over a period of six months.
This dataset included over 700,000 posts and comments, from which they filtered discussions specifically mentioning immigrants. After processing, they ended up with 86,462 posts that discussed immigration.
Once the dataset was refined, the researchers performed an emotion analysis to assess the emotional tone of the posts. They used specialized software to detect the presence of positive and negative emotions in the text, ensuring the inclusion of Singapore-specific slang and context. Additionally, they employed a topic modeling technique to identify the main themes in these discussions. Topic modeling is a method that groups related words together to understand the most frequent concerns or topics being discussed about immigrants.
The researchers found that social media discussions about immigrants were predominantly negative. Posts that mentioned immigrants contained more negative emotions—such as fear, anger, or disgust—compared to general social media posts. In terms of themes, much of the discourse revolved around perceived economic and cultural threats posed by immigrants, with frequent mentions of job competition and cultural differences. These findings suggested that social media platforms serve as spaces where negative emotions and concerns about immigration are actively expressed and shared.
To follow up on this, the researchers then conducted a national survey to investigate how informational use of social media—such as reading and sharing news—relates to anti-immigrant emotions. The researchers surveyed over 1,036 Singaporean citizens, aiming to understand the psychological mechanisms that underlie anti-immigrant attitudes.
The survey asked participants about their frequency of social media use, their perceptions of immigrants as either symbolic or realistic threats, and their negative emotions toward various immigrant groups (Indians, Americans, and Malays). Participants were also tested on their cognitive ability using a standardized vocabulary-based test, which served as a measure of their information processing skills.
In this second study, the researchers explored whether symbolic and realistic threats mediated the relationship between social media use and negative emotions toward immigrants. Symbolic threats involved concerns that immigrants might undermine the cultural identity of Singapore, while realistic threats were associated with fears about job loss and overcrowding. They also examined how cognitive ability moderated these relationships, meaning they looked at how an individual’s cognitive skills affected the strength of the connection between social media use, perceived threats, and anti-immigrant emotions.
The findings of the second study showed that social media use was strongly associated with negative emotions toward immigrants, but this relationship was mediated by perceptions of symbolic and realistic threats. People who frequently used social media were more likely to view immigrants as threats, and this perception, in turn, led to stronger negative feelings like anger or fear.
Importantly, cognitive ability moderated this effect. Individuals with lower cognitive abilities were more susceptible to forming negative emotions based on threat perceptions, while those with higher cognitive abilities were less influenced by social media content in this way. This suggested that cognitive capacity plays a key role in how people interpret social media content and how susceptible they are to forming negative attitudes toward immigrants.
“Our data suggests a negative association between cognitive ability and anti-immigrant affect across all three immigrant groups,” the researchers wrote. “Moreover, cognitive ability was found to moderate the mediation effect via threat perceptions for all these groups. Therefore, the role of realistic and symbolic threats in tuning social media use into prejudiced emotions is more significant in individuals with lower and moderate cognitive ability levels than in individuals with high cognitive ability.”
“The study confirms existing research explicating the direct associations and expands on it, showing that cognitive ability might influence how individuals process and evaluate information, especially sociopolitical content, on social media platforms (Pennycook and Rand, 2020). Those with lower cognitive abilities might be more prone to accepting misinformation or being influenced by biased narratives, leading to heightened prejudiced emotions (Ahmed et al., 2021a,b). This aligns with existing research that has explored direct associations between cognitive ability and prejudice, suggesting that cognitive ability can influence both direct prejudice and how users interpret sociopolitical content, culminating in prejudiced emotions.”
While the study provides valuable insights, it is important to recognize its limitations. The study focused mainly on cognitive ability and its moderating effect, but other individual differences, such as personality traits or educational background, could also play a significant role in shaping attitudes toward immigrants. Further research could explore these variables to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how people form opinions about immigrants.
Future studies could also adopt a longitudinal design, tracking changes in attitudes over time to better determine the causal relationships between social media use, perceived threats, cognitive ability, and the development of anti-immigrant emotions. Additionally, more work could be done to analyze specific types of social media content (e.g., news articles, opinion posts, or videos) to understand which formats or platforms are most influential in shaping attitudes.
The study, “Social media and anti-immigrant prejudice: a multi-method analysis of the role of social media use, threat perceptions, and cognitive ability,” was authored by Saifuddin Ahmed, Kokil Jaidka, Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen, Mengxuan Cai, Anfan Chen, Claire Stravato Emes, Valerie Yu, and Arul Chib.