According to an Experiment, Trump's Victory in 2016 Legitimized Xenophobia. Will It Happen Again?
The outcome of the US lessons will be important, among other things, for the future of immigrants and other minorities. "And this is not only because of the policies of the next President, but also because of how American citizens will behave towards those minorities after the elections," explains Stefano Fiorin, professor in the Department of Economics at Bocconi University. "In fact, when politicians who openly attack minorities (saying they want to build walls or eliminate Roma camps with bulldozers) receive significant electoral success, their words and popularity can lead to the legitimization of derogatory language and violent behavior against these minorities". To demonstrate this hypothesis, in 2016 Fiorin and co-authors conducted an experiment in the U.S., asking participants if they wanted to donate money to an openly anti-immigrationist organization, telling some that the donation would be anonymous, others that it would be public. "What we see," comments Fiorin, "is that before Trump's election, supporting a xenophobic cause was socially stigmatized (participants were less inclined to donate when participation was public)." Immediately after the election, "in which Trump won using an explicitly anti-immigration campaign, this social norm against xenophobia quickly disappeared". Knowing in fact that many countrymen had expressed xenophobic feelings by voting for Trump, "participants began to donate more to the organization even publicly, because they were no longer afraid of being judged as extremists". It will therefore be interesting to understand "whether these dynamics will be reinforced by a Trump victory, or whether a Biden victory can resurface those social norms in defense of minorities that existed in the past," Fiorin concludes.