Asian Evasion: Identifying and Countering a Bias Toward Avoiding Asians With COVID-19

Abstract

Converging evidence points toward the COVID-19 pandemic having amplified lingering anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination, including the virus’s geographical origin being highlighted on social media. This amplification is consistent with theoretical frameworks and empirical findings that connect moral disapproval to biological aversion. Furthermore, experimental literature suggests that prejudicial stereotypes (e.g., of Black criminality) can prompt behavioral discrimination (e.g., disproportionate aggression in shoot/don’t-shoot simulation tasks). Hence, we tested across four experiments (N = 2,844) whether prejudicial stereotypes of Asian infectivity, prominent during the COVID-19 era, might analogously trigger disproportionate avoidance. White participants (Experiments 1 and 2, United Kingdom and United States, crowdsourced) cross-culturally exhibited a pattern of Asian evasion on a custom-made approach-avoidance simulation task: they more readily avoided infected targets when Asian and more readily approached uninfected targets when White. However, Asian evasion waned after exposure to both associative pairings unsupportive of the stereotype and explicit media critique of the stereotype (Experiments 3 and 4: United States, crowdsourced). Our findings highlight how, even if the threat of COVID-19 induced anti-Asian aversions consistent with historical hatreds (i.e., “yellow peril”), some of those aversions may be readily remediated.