Jessica Biggs and Dr. Christopher Karpowitz, Department of Political Science
The purpose of this project was to study whether exposing survey participants to information about immigration change will affect participants with high levels of authoritarianism. This project focused on whether individuals with high levels of authoritarianism will have higher levels of cognitive dissonance when presented with information about change and increasing immigrant populations.
This project was part of a larger study of Utah citizens about illegal immigration and includes three online surveys of Utah citizens, including a pilot study that has already been fielded. In order to parse out competing views on immigration, the online surveys contained a video experiment that manipulates what information participants are exposed to. Survey participants were randomized into nine separate treatment groups. One control group did not receive any video. Another control group received a video about changes in travel and traffic in Utah. The other seven groups received video treatments that highlighted different information about immigration in Utah.
After the surveys were fielded, I coded and standardized the data so that it could be analyzed using statistical software. I spent several weeks checking for correlations, assembling models, and running regressions in order to identify whether or not my hypothesis was correct.
Two important survey batteries for this project measured authoritarianism and cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, these measures did not show significant change between treatment groups. Although members of the groups were shown different information, their reactions to the treatments were not correlated with either authoritarianism or cognitive dissonance. This result was unexpected and made it impossible to continue with my original hypothesis and research project.
Since the video treatments did not reveal the levels of cognitive dissonance that I had hypothesized, I decided to explore a new hypothesis with the data. I decided to use the information we had gathered from other survey batteries to find out if serving LDS missions in Spanish-speaking countries affected immigration attitudes. I was especially interested in measuring differences in how these returned missionaries reacted to the four immigration bills passed by the Utah State Legislature. My new hypothesis was that BYU students who had served Spanish-speaking missions would be less likely to favor “strict” immigration laws like the Arizona bill.
To test this hypothesis, I ran several regressions that included many relevant independent variables, such as gender, party identification, ideology, and religious activity. Although most significant variables increased the likelihood of supporting stricter immigration laws, BYU students who served Spanish- speaking missions were less likely to favor strict immigration laws like the Arizona bill, even when controlling for partisanship. Respondents who served Spanish-speaking missions were more likely to support bills involving sponsorship and guest worker programs.
Although I had to change my research project after my first hypothesis was not supported by the data, I was able to analyze the data and present my findings at the Mary Lou Fulton Poster Conference.