Majority–minority acculturation preferences concordance as an antecedent of attitudes towards immigrants: the mediating role of perceived symbolic threat and metastereotypes

tThrough an experimental design, we investigated the effects of majority–minority accul-turation preferences concordance and immigrants’ generational status on Italians’ attitudestowards Albanian immigrants. The role of perceived threat and metastereotypes in medi-ating this relationship was examined. Participants (N = 178) were categorized into differentlevels of culture maintenance and intercultural contact concordance. Findings showedthat discrepancies in the contact dimension affected majority members’ attitudes towardsimmigrants. Both perceived threat and metastereotypes were found to mediate therelationship between contact discrepancies and attitudes towards immigrants. Culturemaintenance concordance interacted with immigrants’ generational status in influenc-ing majority members’ attitudes. This research confirmed the importance of taking intoaccount the dynamic and reciprocal relationship between majority and immigrant accul-turation preferences, confirming that the most positive attitudes were produced whenimmigrants were perceived to adopt the same strategy as the majority, especially withrespect to intergroup contact.