Abstract
Building cohesive societies where individuals from diverse backgrounds can thrive is one of the most challenging tasks both within and between communities. In the context of migration, this challenge is often exacerbated by counterproductive emotional dynamics, such as the perception of threats from the host society towards immigrants, which can hinder the development of supportive and empowering relationships. The present research examined whether an interdependence mindset—the perception that immigrants and members of the receiving society are mutually reliant and benefit from each other’s contributions—promotes autonomy-oriented helping (but not dependency-oriented helping). Across two experiments conducted in the United States (total N = 801), perceiving immigrants as positively contributing to society was consistently associated with greater autonomy-oriented helping. In Study 2, we experimentally examined whether interdependence framing would sustain autonomy-oriented helping when system threat was made salient in the context of a real-world education policy. Although the overall interaction between threat and framing condition did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance, additional analyses indicated that allocations to the education fund was lower in the threat vs the control condition within the independence condition, whereas allocations in the interdependence condition were statistically comparable across threat contexts. These findings suggest that interdependence framing may help sustain autonomy-oriented helping in contexts where threat narratives are salient. Results are discussed in terms of communication strategies and their practical implications.
Public significance statement ASAP-ORR-25-05-2789
This research shows that emphasizing mutual reliance and shared contribution between immigrants and the host society can foster more empowering, autonomy-oriented forms of support. Encouraging an interdependence mindset may help sustain constructive and supportive responses even in contexts where threat narratives are salient, thereby promoting more constructive relations in diverse communities.