ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses whether ethnic exclusionist reactions and nationalist attitudes are indeed systematically related in many countries, thereby considering the multidimensionality of both concepts as well as their empirical associations. In this book, several theories will be examined that shed light on why people hold nationalist attitudes and show exclusionist reactions, as well as on social conditions in which people have stronger nationalist attitudes and exclusionist reactions. Both social psychologists and sociologists have contributed to realistic group conflict theory, social identity theory stems, for the greater part, from the social-psychological tradition. Although social identity theory does not prove that social identification and social contra-identification simultaneously occur, it does explain how positive ingroup and negative outgroup attitudes come about together, since they result from the same psychological mechanisms of social identification and social contra- identification.
