In the 90's I took the meyers-briggs and found I was ENFP. A number of years ago I updated that and took the Big-5. Agreeableness high, Extraversion high, Conscientiousness low, Openness high, and Neuroticism high (I am a bit skeptical of the neuroticism score).
I was pro-immigration for a very long time, basically until I entered my 50's. I worked for 9 years at a firm where over 2/3rds of the staff were recently arrived immigrants or children of immigrants and english was not their first language. It was a great place to work and I learned a lot about other cultures while breaking out of my suburban naiveté. So what changed? The places I now work as a contractor have used immigration as a way to prevent wages from rising and in many cases well below cost of living increases. Very often I am one of the few people who speaks english fluently in meetings and these are USA based firms with headquarters in places like Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, and so on. This cadre of migrants (as the press like to rename them) very much likes to hire more people from their home countries that also speak the local languages of where they come from. If these folks were highly qualified it would be easier to see the justification but in so many cases they are terribly under qualified and also cheap to employ. I spend a lot of time explaining the most basic knowledge that used to be common knowledge in my field of technological work, e.g. the TCP/IP protocol stack that runs pretty much everything is unknown to them and they are repeating the mistakes we made in 1998 when setting up networks (just as one example).
My earnings have not gone up since 2017 and yet the cost of living has increased tremendously. In every new talk about projects their is always the rate pressure where the firms are asking us to lower our rates to match offshore firms. In economic terms what I provide is the opposite of a commodity - it takes a lot of real-world experience to do what I do.
When politicians as the nation level promise to reign in the abuses of the H-1B visas that is music to my ears. I have watched that visa system be abused for 25+ years. In a few cases I was introduced to the recent immigrant and told to train them as my replacement, never mind that being a clear violation of the law. The firms just took the stance that they would abuse the system until they got sued or the labor department stepped in, which almost never happened. How could I possibly compete with that?
That matches my experience as well, save for the training my replacement part. The abuse of H1Bs along with the other shady business practices as a result of the "what ever you can get away with is fine" cultural attitude really turned me off to more open immigration policies.
I am commenting as a professional personality psychologist. Of course the best way to answer the question is to look at data on personality and support for open borders. Not wanting to spend a lot of time looking for published articles, I will offer some ideas on theoretical grounds. The way I see it is that there can be a number of reasons for supporting or opposing open borders, and that these differing reasons are associated with different (and sometimes opposite) personality traits. A free-market, libertarian supports open borders on the basis of presumed salutary economic consequences. We libertarian types tend to be low on Agreeableness (or Thinking types in MBTI terms) and high on Openness to Experience. A bleeding heart liberal supports open borders out of sympathy for everyone, including downtrodden foreigners. Bleeding heart liberals tend to be high on Agreeableness (Feeling types) and high on Openness to Experience. Neuroticism is going to show an inconsistent relation to support for open borders. Yes, paranoid anti-immigrant types want closed borders partly because of xenophobia (anxiety about foreigners). But liberals tend to be high on Anxiety. So neuroticism is going to wash out.
I would suggest that personality type has far less to do with the issue of open borders than simple personal experience. If one's experience with immigrants has been positive, then one is far more likely to favor open borders. If negative, then the opposite. Sadly, many Americans have little personal experience with immigrants, and what experience they do have tends to be negative, in large part because of language barriers. When we are unable to communicate effectively in a civil fashion with another person, it is hard to form a favorable impression of them.
Of course, immigrants to the US face the same problem, and tend to cluster in communities where their native language predominates, further compounding the divide and amplifying resentment among the natives. They are more comfortable in their own communities, but it makes integration much less likely, or at least extends the process over generations.
I speak as someone who moved to South America 15 years ago and now speak near-fluent Spanish, so I have been on both sides of the issue, to a degree. I also know a lot of good people who have gone to the US, many of whom are still there. Their life is not easy, but of course, it wasn't easy here either.
I am an American citizen and retired librarian who had an immigrant parent. I bought your open borders book and believe strongly in your thesis. I don’t know much enough about psychology to comment in those terms but I do think I am in the minority among my peers. I think we need a coherent border policy and a way to bring people in legally. I do not believe that those who
do not look like me should be treated as lesser human beings. We all suffer when any one of us is mistreated and looked down on. Even criminals deserve to be treated humanely which is currently not the case in the United States.
I can give you one measly data point: I am strongly an INTP, on many tests, stable over decades. And I am mostly an open-borders advocate--like maybe an 8 on a 0-10 scale, where 10 is absolutely unrestricted.
A couple of months ago, I was thinking about why certain people in my extended family support our authoritarian government for its anti-immigration rhetoric. I found a possible explanation in differences in social dominance orientation (SDO), which correlates with xenophobia and is somewhat analogous to the Myers–Briggs' Judging preference.
Note that I am Hungarian, and that our anti-immigration stance operates more at the level of propaganda than actual policy, which makes sense for an authoritarian leader given the correlation mentioned above. I prefer this kind of ideological categorization to the Myers–Briggs framework, as it makes me view human history as periods in which low-SDO (more egalitarian, against hierarchy) dominate, disrupted by intervals when high-SDO individuals (authoritarian leaders and their sycophantic supporters) reproduce more successfully.
In the 90's I took the meyers-briggs and found I was ENFP. A number of years ago I updated that and took the Big-5. Agreeableness high, Extraversion high, Conscientiousness low, Openness high, and Neuroticism high (I am a bit skeptical of the neuroticism score).
I was pro-immigration for a very long time, basically until I entered my 50's. I worked for 9 years at a firm where over 2/3rds of the staff were recently arrived immigrants or children of immigrants and english was not their first language. It was a great place to work and I learned a lot about other cultures while breaking out of my suburban naiveté. So what changed? The places I now work as a contractor have used immigration as a way to prevent wages from rising and in many cases well below cost of living increases. Very often I am one of the few people who speaks english fluently in meetings and these are USA based firms with headquarters in places like Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, and so on. This cadre of migrants (as the press like to rename them) very much likes to hire more people from their home countries that also speak the local languages of where they come from. If these folks were highly qualified it would be easier to see the justification but in so many cases they are terribly under qualified and also cheap to employ. I spend a lot of time explaining the most basic knowledge that used to be common knowledge in my field of technological work, e.g. the TCP/IP protocol stack that runs pretty much everything is unknown to them and they are repeating the mistakes we made in 1998 when setting up networks (just as one example).
My earnings have not gone up since 2017 and yet the cost of living has increased tremendously. In every new talk about projects their is always the rate pressure where the firms are asking us to lower our rates to match offshore firms. In economic terms what I provide is the opposite of a commodity - it takes a lot of real-world experience to do what I do.
When politicians as the nation level promise to reign in the abuses of the H-1B visas that is music to my ears. I have watched that visa system be abused for 25+ years. In a few cases I was introduced to the recent immigrant and told to train them as my replacement, never mind that being a clear violation of the law. The firms just took the stance that they would abuse the system until they got sued or the labor department stepped in, which almost never happened. How could I possibly compete with that?
That matches my experience as well, save for the training my replacement part. The abuse of H1Bs along with the other shady business practices as a result of the "what ever you can get away with is fine" cultural attitude really turned me off to more open immigration policies.
Autism! Apparently, us open-borders advocates are all autistic! lol
https://openborders.info/aspergers-syndrome/
I am commenting as a professional personality psychologist. Of course the best way to answer the question is to look at data on personality and support for open borders. Not wanting to spend a lot of time looking for published articles, I will offer some ideas on theoretical grounds. The way I see it is that there can be a number of reasons for supporting or opposing open borders, and that these differing reasons are associated with different (and sometimes opposite) personality traits. A free-market, libertarian supports open borders on the basis of presumed salutary economic consequences. We libertarian types tend to be low on Agreeableness (or Thinking types in MBTI terms) and high on Openness to Experience. A bleeding heart liberal supports open borders out of sympathy for everyone, including downtrodden foreigners. Bleeding heart liberals tend to be high on Agreeableness (Feeling types) and high on Openness to Experience. Neuroticism is going to show an inconsistent relation to support for open borders. Yes, paranoid anti-immigrant types want closed borders partly because of xenophobia (anxiety about foreigners). But liberals tend to be high on Anxiety. So neuroticism is going to wash out.
So, it sounds like the one reliable predictor left is "Openness".
Yes, and the direction should be positive. I am not sure where Bryan got the idea that "closed personalities lean toward free-market positions."
Also what does "bleg" mean? Am I the only one confused by this??
Wait—Steve Sailer, STEVE SAILER?!?!
In case anyone is curious, here is a FREE Big 5 Personality Test: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/IPIP-BFFM/
They change the names of some of the factors around. Kinda annoying! But it's FREE!
You can also screen yourself for autism, here: https://embrace-autism.com/autism-spectrum-quotient/
#youreWelcome!
I would suggest that personality type has far less to do with the issue of open borders than simple personal experience. If one's experience with immigrants has been positive, then one is far more likely to favor open borders. If negative, then the opposite. Sadly, many Americans have little personal experience with immigrants, and what experience they do have tends to be negative, in large part because of language barriers. When we are unable to communicate effectively in a civil fashion with another person, it is hard to form a favorable impression of them.
Of course, immigrants to the US face the same problem, and tend to cluster in communities where their native language predominates, further compounding the divide and amplifying resentment among the natives. They are more comfortable in their own communities, but it makes integration much less likely, or at least extends the process over generations.
I speak as someone who moved to South America 15 years ago and now speak near-fluent Spanish, so I have been on both sides of the issue, to a degree. I also know a lot of good people who have gone to the US, many of whom are still there. Their life is not easy, but of course, it wasn't easy here either.
“Deluded Pollyannas” sounds about right.
I am an American citizen and retired librarian who had an immigrant parent. I bought your open borders book and believe strongly in your thesis. I don’t know much enough about psychology to comment in those terms but I do think I am in the minority among my peers. I think we need a coherent border policy and a way to bring people in legally. I do not believe that those who
do not look like me should be treated as lesser human beings. We all suffer when any one of us is mistreated and looked down on. Even criminals deserve to be treated humanely which is currently not the case in the United States.
At the risk of nit-picking, I suggest that criminals “should” be treated humanely, but “deserve” to be in prison.
"when any one of us is mistreated "
What about one of THEM (not US)?
I can give you one measly data point: I am strongly an INTP, on many tests, stable over decades. And I am mostly an open-borders advocate--like maybe an 8 on a 0-10 scale, where 10 is absolutely unrestricted.
A couple of months ago, I was thinking about why certain people in my extended family support our authoritarian government for its anti-immigration rhetoric. I found a possible explanation in differences in social dominance orientation (SDO), which correlates with xenophobia and is somewhat analogous to the Myers–Briggs' Judging preference.
Note that I am Hungarian, and that our anti-immigration stance operates more at the level of propaganda than actual policy, which makes sense for an authoritarian leader given the correlation mentioned above. I prefer this kind of ideological categorization to the Myers–Briggs framework, as it makes me view human history as periods in which low-SDO (more egalitarian, against hierarchy) dominate, disrupted by intervals when high-SDO individuals (authoritarian leaders and their sycophantic supporters) reproduce more successfully.
I don't think so. I'm a neurotic who is upset with most people for being upset about completely the wrong things.