Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
12-2024
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare pre-existing societal fault lines, placing immense strain on intergroup relations and giving rise to xenophobic sentiments. Drawing on Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT) and Social Identity Approach (SIA), our study examined how the public allocation of COVID-19 variant vaccines could influence the dynamics between local citizens and migrant workers, and under what conditions. One key idea is that valued resource distribution that favour migrant workers may produce increased perceptions of realistic threats among local citizens which could lead to exacerbated negative attitudes and behaviours of high-status local citizens towards low-status migrants, whereas higher fairness perceptions of such resource distributions could potentially mitigate these negative attitudes and behaviours. To investigate these predictions, we employed a cross-cultural approach and conducted an experiment in both an Asian country (Malaysia; N = 197) and a Western country (Australia; N = 210). We manipulated vaccine prioritisation, assessed local citizens' perceptions of the realistic threat and fairness of vaccine prioritisation, and measured their attitudinal responses towards migrant workers. Our results showed that the perceived unfairness in migrant-favouring vaccine prioritisation, rather than realistic threat, negatively affected local citizens' perceptions of the migrant workers. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of intergroup relations.
Keywords
COVID-19 vaccine, fairness, intergroup relations, migrant workers, realistic threat, social identity theory, Malaysia, Australia
Discipline
Asian Studies | Public Health | Social Psychology
Research Areas
Psychology
Publication
Asian Journal of Social Psychology
Volume
27
Issue
4
First Page
995
Last Page
1010
ISSN
1367-2223
Identifier
10.1111/ajsp.12653
Publisher
Wiley
Citation
HUANG, Tengjiao, ZHOU, Haochen, JONES, Liz, & CONG, Chin Wen.(2024). Us or them: How COVID-19 vaccine priority influences perceptions of local-migrant worker relations. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 27(4), 995-1010.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4073
Copyright Owner and License
Publisher
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12653