Negative Intergroup Contact and Radical Right-Wing Voting: The Moderating Roles of Personal and Collective Self-Efficacy

This study examines whether negative contact with immigrants promotes voting for radical right-wing parties, to what extent this relationship can be explained by feelings of outgroup threat, and whether this relationship depends on perceived personal and collective self-efficacy. Hypotheses were tested among 630 native Dutch respondents, mainly living in multicultural neighborhoods. The results show that negative contact with immigrants is associated with feelings of personal (egocentric) and group (sociotropic) threat, and both these feelings, in turn, are associated with radical right-wing voting. However, negative intergroup contact is less strongly related to egocentric threat when individuals feel able to personally address negative situations with other people (personal self-efficacy). Furthermore, the findings suggest that negative intergroup contact is less strongly related to sociotropic threat when individuals believe that people in their neighborhood are able to collectively address some negative situations (collective self-efficacy).