ABSTRACT

Xenophobia denotes prejudice towards those perceived as foreign. I examined trends in xenophobia according to age, time period, and birth cohort, using population-based data of Germans (ALLBUS, N = 20,023), aged 18 to 97 years, spanning a time period from 1996–2016. I found that xenophobia increased strongly with age and decreased, to a lesser extent, over time periods. Additionally, there were robust U-shaped birth cohort effects, such that younger cohorts born after 1970 expressed increasingly higher levels of xenophobia. Therefore, xenophobia in Germany seemed to decrease across time periods for the whole population, but increased in more recent cohorts, who might thus express more prejudice than previous generations. Future studies should investigate the mechanisms that contribute to these trends and the generalizability of the observed cohort effects.

摘要

仇外心理是指对那些被视为外国人的人的偏见。我使用德国人的人口数据（ALLBUS、N= 20,023），年龄在 18 岁至 97 岁之间，时间跨度为 1996 年至 2016 年。我发现仇外心理随着年龄的增长而急剧增加，并随着时间的推移有所减少。此外，还存在强大的 U 形出生队列效应，例如 1970 年后出生的年轻队列表现出越来越高的仇外心理。因此，德国整个人口的仇外心理似乎随着时间的推移而减少，但在最近的人群中却有所增加，因此他们可能比前几代人表现出更多的偏见。未来的研究应该调查导致这些趋势的机制以及观察到的队列效应的普遍性。