The migrant caravan is comprised of thousands of people traveling from Central America to the Mexico–U.S. border seeking refuge from their home countries. In news coverage, images of the caravan regularly portray large groups of immigrants walking toward the border. What are the consequences of this depiction on attitudes toward immigration? We suggest that images of groups of immigrants, in contrast with images of individual immigrants, will tend to decrease support for immigration. In 2019, we preregistered and ran a web-based survey experiment in the United States in which respondents read a news story with either an image of immigrants in a crowd setting, an image of an individual immigrant, or a control condition. The group treatment produces no systematic increase in anti-immigrant sentiment relative to the control. However, we do find differences in the group and individual treatments for respondents who are high in threat sensitivity. Findings are discussed as they relate to recent work on the roles of both fear and person positivity in attitudes about immigration, as well as the potential importance of editorial choices in the portrayal of immigration to the United States.

移民大篷车由成千上万的人组成，他们从中美洲前往墨西哥-美国边境，寻求从自己的祖国避难。在新闻报道中，商队的影像经常描绘出大批移民向边境走去。这种描写对移民态度的后果是什么？我们建议，与单个移民的图像相比，移民群体的图像将倾向于减少对移民的支持。在2019年，我们在美国预先注册并运行了一个基于网络的调查实验，在该实验中，受访者阅读的新闻故事要么是人群中的移民图像，要么是单个移民的图像，要么是控制条件。相对于对照组，集体治疗没有系统地增加反移民情绪。然而，对于确实具有高度威胁敏感性的受访者，我们确实在团体和个人待遇上存在差异。我们讨论了发现，因为这些发现与最近有关恐惧和人的积极性在移民态度中的作用的工作有关，以及编辑选择对美国移民的刻画的潜在重要性。