Multiple existential threats and attitudes towards Muslims in Finland and Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic

We are currently living in a time of several existential threats: the global pandemic COVID-19, climate change, and the ‘refugee crisis’ caused by violent conflicts and humanitarian catastrophes in Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. These threats do not only affect our well-being but also our sense of control and security, as well as identities and worldviews having also intergroup consequences. In this study, we investigated the links between perceived existential threats (i.e. COVID-19, climate change, and refugee crisis in 2015 that multiplied Muslim population in Europe), national and religious identities, and attitudes towards Muslims (i.e. Muslim refugees, Muslim minority, and Muslim converts) among Christian national majority group members in Finland and Italy in 2020. The results were analysed with multigroup structural equation modelling, and they demonstrated some key differences between how threats perceived from climate change and the refugee crisis in 2015 are translated into the reactions towards Muslims. While threats associated with the refugee crisis were detrimental to outgroup attitudes, climate change threats elicited more positive attitudes towards the outgroups studied. Our preliminary analyses suggested that COVID-19, in turn, seems to elicit feelings of worldview defence through higher levels of national identification with no negative attitudinal ramifications. While Abrahamic identity as a believer was directly associated with more positive attitudes towards Muslims in Italy, it did not account for the link between existential threats and outgroup attitudes. The results are discussed in light of how different threats increase or decrease intergroup harmony.