Norms to be prejudiced: List experiments on attitudes towards immigrants in Japan

Are anti-prejudice norms against immigrants shared worldwide? Although previous studies found that prejudice against immigrants is considered socially undesirable, these studies were conducted exclusively in Western societies and we have little knowledge of the awareness of anti-prejudice norms against immigrants outside of these societies. We use the case of Japan, where people tend to believe that the society is ethnically homogeneous, expecting that this context-specific notion mitigates the awareness of anti-prejudice norms. We conducted two list experiments using online surveys and compared the answers to those of list experiments and direct questions about attitudes towards immigrants to reveal Japanese citizens' perceptions of norms. The results show that Japanese citizens attempt to show more negative attitudes upon direct questions than in list experiments, indicating that it is normative to express prejudice against immigrants rather than suppressing it. These results suggest anti-prejudice norms against immigrants are context-dependent and not universally shared.