br Results br Discussion br Conclusion br Acknowledgements

Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Acknowledgements This study was supported by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council (Grant no. 190709 (FRIPRO)). It is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. A licensure to match data to undertake this study was provided by the National Data Inspectorate in Norway, and the Norwegian Board of Medical Ethics approved the study.
Introduction Attitudes about immigration can be contentious. Sizable percentages of the U.S. population agree that immigrants “take jobs, health care,” with 63% in July 1994, 38% in July 2000, 52% in March 2006, and 41% in March 2013 (Pew Research, 2013b). More recent data (June 2013) indicate that 51% agree that legalizing undocumented immigrants in the U.S. “would take jobs from U.S. citizens” (Pew Research, 2013a). Concerns about immigration informed the federal government shutdown and opposition to the Affordable Care Act in 2013 (Greenberg, Carville & Seifert, 2013), and threatened a federal government shutdown at the close of 2014 (Schlesinger, 2014), and a partial federal government shutdown in early 2015 (Sarly, 2015). Immigration can be a source of individual stress and negative emotion in the U.S. (Greenberg et al., 2013), factors proximal to smoking (Kassel, Stroud & Paronis, 2003). Concerns about immigration are also not limited solely to the United States, as they played a key role in the United Kingdom\'s momentous referendum vote to leave the European Union (Ashcroft, 2016). Drawing upon the social psychological lens afforded by group position theory, a longstanding sociological theory examining intergroup attitudes, the present study examines whether these worrisome attitudes about immigration might shed light on race-based differences in smoking as an emotion and stress-related health behavior. One of the leading sociological social psychological theories on racial attitudes for over the last half century, group position theory predicts racial group differences on immigration attitudes by attributing such differences to dominant/subordinate position in a society\'s racial group hierarchy (Hutchings & Wong, 2014). Group position theory argues that perceived zero-sum GSK126 for scarce resources alongside the dominant group\'s feelings of entitlement or proprietary access to scarce resources and opportunities can engender emotional hostility towards perceived out-group competitors (Blumer, 1958; Bobo, 1999). According to group position theory, perceived group competition encompasses elements of economic precariousness due to perceived economic competition (Quillian, 1995), and negative affect due to encroachment on the dominant group\'s perceived group entitlements and boundaries (Bobo, 1999). As a sociological theory of racial prejudice, group position theory\'s approach to understanding smoking behavior would be similar to research that has found a relationship between smoking and racial resentment, an indicator of contemporary racial prejudice that also highlights group-based negative affect (Samson, 2015b). Perceived economic insecurity and negative group-based emotion potentially link perceptions of group competition and smoking. Research on substance use has long shown a relationship between smoking and both economic insecurity (Prochaska, Rogers & Shi, 2013; Carroll-Scott, Earnshaw, Ickovics, Rosenthal & Santilli, 2012), and negative emotion (Kassel et al., 2003). Periods of economic crisis have been linked to increased smoking among the unemployed (Gallus, Ghislandi & Muttarak, 2015). Potential mechanisms linking economic insecurity with smoking include feeling a loss of control, with smoking acting as a coping behavior (De Vogli & Santinello, 2005), or as relief for stress or tension (Rosenthal, Carroll-Scott, Earnshaw, Santilli & Ickovics, 2012). Individuals who perceive immigrant group competition may similarly experience a sense of low control over the availability of jobs. Likewise, numerous studies have found associations between smoking and negative affect, such as aggression suppression in animal studies and anger reduction in laboratory-based human studies (Kassel et al., 2003). The anger-smoking link is worth particular consideration; a laboratory-based study revealed that random exposure to a demographic prime indicating a future in which whites would be a demographic minority (i.e. a loss in dominant group position) prompted increased feelings of anger and fear towards ethnic minorities among white student participants (Outten, Schmitt, Miller & Garcia, 2012).