This study examined the impact of native youth’s subjective well-being on exclusionary
attitudes toward immigrants, seeking to understand the relationship between subjective
well-being, political distrust, and anti-immigrant attitudes over time. Using longitudinal
data, we followed three cohorts of native young adults (N= 1352;Mage= 22.72,SD= 3.1) in Sweden over a period of
2 years. The results showed that subjective well-being did not predict an increase in
anti-immigrant attitudes among native youth, but anti-immigrant attitudes had a
significant impact on subjective well-being. The data also found bidirectional and
mutually reinforcing relationships between subjective well-being and political distrust,
and between political distrust and anti-immigrant attitudes. These results highlight that
improving young adults’ subjective well-being represents an important basis for preventing
the development of political distrust, which in turn could reduce native youth’s
susceptibility to adopt hostile attitudes toward immigrants.