Diverse Reactions to Ethnic Diversity: The Role of Individual Differences in Authoritarianism

Issues related to ethnic-cultural diversity often make the news headlines in popular media and have attracted extensive attention in the political arena as well as in academic research in psychology, political sciences, and sociology. Political scientist Robert Putnam reported that increased diversity is associated with a range of negative outcomes, including less trust, a decreased sense of community, more prejudice, and more cynicism and mistrust towards politics and politicians. Yet, given that follow-up studies often revealed mixed results, a novel approach to understand the effects of diversity is needed. We address the impact of diversity from a person x context interaction perspective, demonstrating that diversity aggravates the negative attitudes that already exist among certain individuals. Specifically, we review the accumulated evidence showing that particularly those high in authoritarian attitudes are sensitive to diversity, and prone to react with increased negativity to outgroups, politicians, the political system, and democracy.