Between Challenge and Chance: Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Attitudes toward Refugees in Turkey and Germany

Introduction 

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing more than 6 million deaths and 500 million infections worldwide, the world has been facing an immense crisis over the last two years that has not only affected the public’s physical health but also placed serious psychological strain on individuals and societies. From a social psychological perspective, the exposure to a global threat such as COVID-19 is likely to have implications on social identity, perception, and behavior: in other words, how people view themselves, how they perceive others, and how they interact with them. The perception and behavior directed at social out-groups is particularly likely to shift when responding to strong perceptions of threat. The nature and direction of such shifts, however, cannot be clearly foreseen and can have either positive or negative impacts. On the positive side, common threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic may blur preexisting group boundaries and promote social cohesion, unity, and prosocial behavior by triggering an overarching and inclusive group identity. On the negative side, however, exposure to the COVID-19 threat may promote ethnocentrism and nurture violence, extremism, and prejudice against minority group members.

Final Remarks 

The COVID-19 pandemic has put societies across the world under a stress test, with serious effects also on intergroup relations. It is thus of vital importance to understand how a high-threat condition such as the pandemic will play out on prejudice and discrimination toward minority groups and to suggest evidence-based, policy-relevant, and state-of-the art measures to combat this. Right now, we are standing at a crossroads: if we succeed in turning the challenges of the pandemic into a chance, we may come out from this pandemic as a more cohesive and inclusive society.