There has been much controversy about the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia in recent years, with the Australian Government continuing to enforce a very hard-line stance on asylum seekers who arrive to Australia by boat. The present study examined attitudes towards asylum seekers using 164 Australian community members during June 2015 by way of questionnaire. Our primary research question involved how five variables predicted false beliefs about asylum seekers. Specifically, we measured prejudice, the third-person effect, and confidence in the answers given to false beliefs about asylum seekers. Regression results indicated that the main predictors of false beliefs were right-wing political orientation, prejudice, confidence in espousing false beliefs, and the third-person effect (politicians). Furthermore, most of our community participants accepted a large number of false beliefs as being true, with approximately two-thirds of our participants scoring above the midpoint. This reflects similar findings over the last decade or so. Our results indicate that, if one believes in bottom-up change, a more nuanced approach needs to be undertaken with community anti-prejudice interventions.

中文翻译：

---

有关寻求庇护者到澳大利亚的错误信念：信心在此类信念，偏见和第三人称效应中的作用

近年来，在澳大利亚，寻求庇护者的待遇一直存在争议，澳大利亚政府继续对乘船抵达澳大利亚的寻求庇护者采取强硬立场。本研究通过问卷调查的方式在2015年6月期间使用164名澳大利亚社区成员对寻求庇护者的态度进行了调查。我们的主要研究问题涉及五个变量如何预测对寻求庇护者的错误信念。具体来说，我们测量了偏见，第三人称效果以及对有关寻求庇护者错误信念的答案的信心。回归结果表明，错误信念的主要预测因素是右翼政治倾向，偏见，拥护错误信念的信心以及第三人称效果（政客）。此外，我们大多数社区参与者接受了大量错误信念，认为它们是真实的，大约三分之二的参与者得分都高于中点。这反映了过去十年左右的类似发现。我们的结果表明，如果人们相信自下而上的变化，则需要对社区的反偏见干预采取更细微的方法。