Prejudice Against Immigrants Through The Lens of Evolutionary Psychology

Social psychology is a field focusing on the exploration of theories on anthropology based on a collective group’s behaviour as a response to a particular situation, their surroundings or their individual responses to being part of a group. Evolutionary psychology theorises on the adaptation of human behaviour from a historical perspective which has come about as a result of environmental factors and influences as well as natural selection. This essay will explore the evolutionary psychology which was socialised into current intergroup behaviour towards the prejudice that immigrants face.

The first notable instance of prejudice against immigrants could be dated back to the Atlantic slave trade, when people were captured from Africa and brought across the ocean in order to be sold on as slaves in exchange for goods. Of course, this is more along the lines of human trafficking than people immigrating, but the prejudice that came from that is where it was deep-rooted into the social constructs to tolerate hate towards immigrants. The black people in Africa would be gathered from their tribes by means of traders and brought to the coast to be traded for goods, to then be packed into a ship as though they were merely livestock rather than human beings, taken across the Atlantic and traded once again for goods before being taken to auction for people to buy them as slaves. They were forced to work on plantations or in houses with only the hope that they might one day have the ability to buy their own freedom from their owners. The prejudice against blacks in America is an ongoing one with them only having recently won their battle for basic civil rights through the movement started by means of a simple act by Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus and then led by Martin Luther King, Jr. This intergroup prejudiced reaction is a result of conformity over the years with the cultural norm from when they were still seen as slaves. A survey conducted by Smith, Bond and Kagitcibasi in 2006 found that even in cases of conformity that has a negative impact, people find it hard to resist settling for group standards, which explains why people are more willing to allow this kind of behaviour to take place. It is an evolutionary response that has become a social theory.

There are two examples of immigration prejudices ongoing at the present time. First, there is Trump’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agenda, where he is currently gathering up immigrants without visas and sending them back to their native countries. The treatment he is putting the immigrants through is horrendous with ‘Trump Camps’ being set up, which are essentially concentration camps, where people are forced to sleep on the floor with hundreds to a confined space, refusing them basic human rights such as access to drinking water and proper sanitation with reports of people resorting to drinking from the toilet out of desperation. They are refused any phone calls or access to the internet as well as money to use these things so that they can reach out to help. There are organisations set up to stop this from happening, but without any ability to access from the camps and ICE centres, more often than not, people are sent back to places where they can potentially face their deaths. There are children being separated from their families and sent to camps where they are given psychiatric drugs in an attempt to control them and calm them down. By instilling fear into people, essentially politically brainwashing groups such as minorities, immigrants and the majority population, it allows for a state of surrender to the idea of ethnocentrism that Trump is pushing and his authoritarian personality which promotes the stigmatisation of specific groups of people, in this case, Muslims and people from Islamic countries. This is a prime example of fascism and what is happening in the USA at this moment in time could be compared to the holocaust. Theodor Adorno and Else Frenkel-Brunswick came up with the theory for the authoritarian personality and explained it as one with the role of promoting the extreme right-wing ideology of fascism (1950). In addition to this there has also been a lot of people entering the United Kingdom from places such as Syria and middle-eastern countries after the UKs foreign involvement. Immigration is a result of politics and the prejudice against immigrants is a programmed response that has been a product of years of nations being taught by usually right-wing groups to respond with this kind of behaviour. The inter-group behaviour between immigrants and people who are native to the land often causes conflict as a result of dogmatism. Michael A. Hogg and Graham M. Vaughan stated “From the perspective of personality theories, prejudice reduction entails changing the personality of the prejudiced person. More precisely, it would involve ensuring that particular parental strategies of child rearing were avoided in order to prevent the creation of bigoted people.” Essentially, prejudice is a conditioned response from evolutionary psychology, passed down through the generations. Though it is collectively a societal result, it is also a parental one too, with parents having the responsibility to break from the conformity that has allowed the stigma and prejudice to carry on and start creating a new social norm, one that does not allow prejudice of marginalised groups to be tolerated. Without people willing to conform to old societal rules, people such as Trump and Hitler with authoritarian personalities would not have the ability to thrive in a social group attempting to rewrite the rules of history.

In some cases, it has been the immigrants who steal the land from the natives, though usually this is only the case of white people being in the immigrant position. Perhaps this could be where some of the fear and prejudice around immigrants stems from, in that throughout history, white people who have immigrated have also treated the natives unfairly. For example, Christopher Columbus ‘discovering’ the Americas as well as the criminal justice system in the UK that resulted in criminals being shipped off to Australia. In the case of the Americas, Columbus had his men essentially rape the land from the native Americans, intentionally spreading diseases amongst the people in an attempt to narrow down the population and then killing the men and raping the women who survived. Even to this day, the indigenous people of America are deeply oppressed and struggle to protect what little land they have left. While the social regime in the US is a capitalist one, with the intention to profit by any means necessary, the indigenous people strive to worship the land that they stand on, rather than take it for all that it’s worth. Perhaps it is this kindness and desire to respect one another and the land as equals that happened to be the reason Columbus was able to be so brutal but after the genocide that took place, natives were known to be defensive to the men who were inhabiting the land. In Australia, there are several cases during the 20th century of children from Aboriginal families being stolen from their homes. This was a common occurrence, if the children looked ‘white’ enough, they would be taken from their families by the government and given to an adoptive family who were often physically and sexually abusive to the children as well as emotionally as they would force them to reject their aboriginal heritage. This caused a lot of shame in the children and only made them reject their background more. This premediated scheme enforced by the government forced aboriginal children to integrate into society and abandon their cultural history and take on a societal role that benefits the right-wing. This is known in Australia as the ‘stolen generation.’ This was traumatising for both the children who were stolen as well as the families who had to watch their children be taken away from them. Many never recovered from the loss. At the present day, the indigenous people in places such as America and Australia refuse to take anything to do with the infrastructures put in place by the immigrants, which isn’t a surprise considering they had their homes stolen from them. Particularly in Australia, the aboriginals remain isolated in their tribes and very little is known about their culture.

To sum up everything that has been stated, the evolutionary psychology which has allowed the stigmatisation of particular groups of people is what has allowed prejudice to go on for so long. In the occasion of the term ‘immigrant’ popping up, it is immediately associated with the stigma that has been deep-rooted in place by means of our ancestors and carried on throughout history by becoming a social norm. This idea has been allowed to thrive by right-wing government parties pushing to install the notion into majority groups that all immigrants should be feared when as a matter of fact, that is not the case. In truth, it comes down to a racist response which has been normalised by intergroup behaviour over the years. The prejudice against immigrants originates from the fear that they will do to us what white people did to the majority of the world.