Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Anecdotal reports suggested an uptick in anti-Asian prejudice corresponding with the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining responses from White U.S. citizens (N = 589) during the first months of the pandemic, this study tested: (a) whether actual intensity (official number of cases or deaths reported) or perceived intensity (participants’ estimates of the same) of the COVID-19 outbreak predicted indicators of racial outgroup prejudice, particularly those associated with cross-group interaction, (b) whether outgroup prejudice was oriented toward Asian people specifically, or toward racial outgroups more broadly (e.g., toward both Asian people and Black people), and (c) whether contact with racial outgroups moderated relations between COVID-19 intensity and racial prejudice. Results showed that perceived COVID-19 intensity was associated with prejudice indicators representing the desire for social distance from Asian people, as well as from Black people, yet it was unrelated to reports of negative affect toward either racial outgroup. These patterns support the idea that prejudice during periods of disease outbreak might functionally serve to reduce willingness for interaction with, and likelihood of infection from, racial outgroups. Contact moderated the relation between official reports of COVID-19 intensity and support for anti-China travel policies, such that greater contact with Asian people was associated with less support for exclusionary, anti-China travel policies when actual COVID-19 intensity was high. Overall, these results suggest that intensity of disease threat can exacerbate racial outgroup prejudice and reduce willingness for cross-group interaction, but that intergroup contact may sometimes provide a prejudice-attenuating effect.

Keywords

COVID-19 intergroup contact prejudice

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abrams

Eller

(2017). A temporally integrated model of intergroup contact and threat (TIMICAT). In Vezzali

Stathi

(Eds.), Intergroup contact theory: Recent developments and future directions (pp. 72–91). Routledge.

Ackerman

J. M.

Hill

S. E.

Murray

D. R.

(2018). The behavioral immune system: Current concerns and future directions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 12, Article e12371. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12371

Alston

Meleady

Seger

C. R.

(2020). Can past intergroup contact shape support for policies in a pandemic? Processes predicting endorsement of discriminatory Chinese restrictions during the COVID-19 crisis. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220959710

Bates

Mächler

Bolker

Walker

(2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01

Bogardus

E. S.

(1933). A social distance scale. Sociology & Social Research, 17, 265–271.

Bollyky

T. J.

Nuzzo

J. B.

(2020, October 1). Trump’s “early” travel “bans” weren’t early, weren’t bans and didn’t work. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/01/debate-early-travel-bans-china/

Cottrell

C. A.

Neuberg

S. L.

(2005). Different emotional reactions to different groups: A sociofunctional threat-based approach to “prejudice.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 770–789. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.5.770

Cumming

. (2014). The new statistics: Why and how. Psychological Science, 25(1), 7–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613504966

Devos

Banaji

M. R.

(2005). American = White? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 447–466. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.3.447

10.

Dixon

J. C.

(2006). The ties that bind and those that don’t: Toward reconciling group threat and contact theories of prejudice. Social Forces, 84, 2179–2204. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2006.0085

11.

Doherty

T. J.

Clayton

(2011). The psychological impacts of global climate change. American Psychologist, 66, 265–276. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023141

12.

Ellerbeck

(2020, May 11). Over 30 percent of Americans have witnessed COVID-19 bias against Asians, poll says. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/over-30-americans-have-witnessed-covid-19-bias-against-asians-n1193901

13.

Esarey

Sumner

J. L.

(2017). Marginal effects in interaction models: Determining and controlling the false positive rate. Comparative Political Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414017730080

14.

Faul

Erdfelder

Lang

A.-G.

Buchner

(2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193146

15.

Faulkner

Schaller

Park

J. H.

Duncan

L. A.

(2004). Evolved disease-avoidance mechanisms and contemporary xenophobic attitudes. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7, 333–353. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430204046142

16.

Fox

Weisberg

(2019). An R companion to applied regression (3rd ed.). SAGE.

17.

Fritsche

Jonas

Kessler

(2011). Collective reactions to threat: Implications for intergroup conflict and for solving societal crises. Social Issues and Policy Review, 5, 101–136. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-2409.2011.01027.x

18.

Gordon

Posner

Klein

Mumm

Olsen

M. W. (Producers)

. (2020). Coronavirus, explained [TV series]. Netflix.

19.

Gover

A. R.

Harper

S. B.

Langton

(2020). Anti-Asian hate crime during the COVID-19 pandemic: Exploring the reproduction of inequality. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 45, 647–667. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09545-1

20.

Jeung

Nham

(2020). Incidents of coronavirus-related discrimination. Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council; Chinese for Affirmative Action. http://www.asianpacificpolicyandplanningcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/STOP_AAPI_HATE_MONTHLY_REPORT_4_23_20.pdf

21.

Jones

K. E.

Patel

N. G.

Levy

M. A.

Storeygard

Balk

Gittleman

J. L.

Daszak

(2008). Global trends in emerging infectious diseases. Nature, 451, 990–993. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06536

22.

Kates

Tolbert

Orgera

Michaud

Levitt

(2020). Where are the COVID-19 hotspots? Tracking state outbreaks. KFF. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/where-are-the-covid-19-hotspots-tracking-state-outbreaks/

23.

Kim

C. J.

(1999). The racial triangulation of Asian Americans. Politics & Society, 27, 105–138. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329299027001005

24.

Knowles

Tropp

L. R.

(2018). The racial and economic context of Trump support: Evidence for threat, identity, and contact effects in the 2016 presidential election. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9, 275–284. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618759326

25.

Kurzban

Leary

M. R.

(2001). Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: The functions of social exclusion. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 187–208. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.2.187

26.

Lee

Yadav

(2020, May 21). The rise of anti-Asian hate in the wake of Covid-19. Items. https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/the-rise-of-anti-asian-hate-in-the-wake-of-covid-19/

27.

Lin

M. H.

Kwan

Cheung

Fiske

S. T.

(2005). Stereotype content model explains prejudice for an envied outgroup: Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271320

28.

Mitchell

Jurkowitz

Oliphant

J. B.

Shearer

(2020). Three months in, many Americans see exaggeration, conspiracy theories and partisanship in COVID-19 news. Pew Research Center. https://www.journalism.org/2020/06/29/three-months-in-many-americans-see-exaggeration-conspiracy-theories-and-partisanship-in-covid-19-news/

29.

Navarrete

C. D.

Fessler

(2005). Disease avoidance and ethnocentrism: The effects of disease vulnerability and disgust sensitivity on intergroup attitudes. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27, 270–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.12.001

30.

Nguyen

T. T.

Criss

Dwivedi

Huang

Keralis

Hsu

Phan

Nguyen

L. H.

Yardi

Glymour

M. M.

Allen

A. M.

Chae

D. H.

Gee

G. C.

Nguyen

Q. C.

(2020). Exploring U.S. shifts in anti-Asian sentiment with the emergence of COVID-19. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17, Article 7032. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17197032

31.

Niño

Harris

Drawve

Fitzpatrick

K. M.

(2021). Race and ethnicity, gender, and age on perceived threats and fear of COVID-19: Evidence from two national data sources. SSM – Population Health, 13, Article 100717. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100717

32.

Noel

T. K.

(2020). Conflating culture with COVID-19: Xenophobic repercussions of a global pandemic. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 2, Article 100044. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2020.100044

33.

Nytimes/covid-19-data. (2020). GitHub. https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data

34.

Oliver

J. E.

(2010). The paradoxes of integration: Race, neighborhood, and civic life in multiethnic America. The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226626642.001.0001

35.

Park

J. H.

Faulkner

Schaller

(2003). Evolved disease-avoidance processes and contemporary antisocial behavior: Prejudicial attitudes and avoidance of people with physical disabilities. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 27, 65–87. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023910408854

36.

Parks

S. J.

Yoo

H. C.

(2016). Does endorsement of the model minority myth relate to anti-Asian sentiments among White college students? The role of a color-blind racial attitude. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 7, 287–294. https://doi.org/10.1037/aap0000056

37.

Perugini

Gallucci

Costantini

(2018). A practical primer to power analysis for simple experimental designs. International Review of Social Psychology, 31, Article 20. http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.181

38.

Pettigrew

T. F.

(1998). Intergroup contact theory. Annual Review of Psychology, 49, 65–85. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.65

39.

Pettigrew

T. F.

(2018). The emergence of contextual social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 963–971. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218756033

40.

Pettigrew

T. F.

Tropp

L. R.

(2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 751–783. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751

41.

Pettigrew

T. F.

Tropp

L. R.

(2008). How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 922–934. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.504

42.

Pettigrew

T. F.

Tropp

L. R.

(2011). When groups meet: The dynamics of intergroup contact. Psychology Press.

43.

Pettigrew

T. F.

Wagner

Christ

(2010). Population ratios and prejudice: Modeling both contact and threat effects. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36, 635–650. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691830903516034

44.

Prati

Pietrantoni

(2016). Knowledge, risk perceptions, and xenophobic attitudes: Evidence from Italy during the Ebola outbreak. Risk Analysis, 36, 2000–2010. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12537

45.

Quillian

(1995). Prejudice as a response to perceived group threat: Population composition and anti-immigrant and racial prejudice in Europe. American Sociological Review, 60, 586–611. https://doi.org/10.2307/2096296

46.

Quillian

Pager

(2001). Black neighbors, higher crime? The role of racial stereotypes in evaluations of neighborhood crime. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 717–767. https://doi.org/10.1086/338938

47.

R Core Team. (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/

48.

Reny

T. T.

Barreto

M. A.

(2020). Xenophobia in the time of pandemic: Othering, anti-Asian attitudes, and COVID-19. Politics, Groups, and Identities. https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2020.1769693

49.

Rizzo

Britton

Rhodes

Jamieson

K.-M. L

. (2020, July 17). Metrics of racial inequalities. Retrieved from osf.io/m2evf

50.

Rosenfeld

D. L.

Balcetis

Bastian

Berkman

Bosson

Brannon

Burrow

A. L.

Cameron

Chen

Cook

J. E.

Crandall

Davidai

Dhont

Eastwick

Gaither

Gangestad

Gilovich

Gray

Haines

E. L.

. . . Tomiyama

A. J.

(2020). Conducting social psychological research in the wake of COVID-19. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6gjfm

51.

Ruiz

N. G.

Horowitz

J. M.

Tamir

(2020). Many Black, Asian Americans say they have experienced discrimination amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/07/01/many-black-and-asian-americans-say-they-have-experienced-discrimination-amid-the-covid-19-outbreak/

52.

Sawada

Auger

Lydon

J. E.

(2017). Activation of the behavioral immune system: Putting the brakes on affiliation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44, 224–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217736046

53.

Schaller

Duncan

L. A.

(2007). The behavioral immune system: Its evolution and social psychological implications. In Forgas

J. P.

Haselton

M. G.

von Hippel

(Eds.), Evolution and the social mind: Evolutionary psychology and social cognition (pp. 293–307). Psychology Press.

54.

Schaller

Neuberg

S. L.

(2012). Danger, disease, and the nature of prejudice(s). In Zanna

Olson

(Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 46, pp. 1–54). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-394281-4.00001-5

55.

Schaller

Park

J. H.

(2011). The behavioral immune system (and why it matters). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 99–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411402596

56.

Schlueter

Scheepers

(2010). The relationship between outgroup size and anti-outgroup attitudes: A theoretical synthesis and empirical test of group threat- and intergroup contact theory. Social Science Research, 39, 285–295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2009.07.006

57.

Semyonov

Raijman

Gorodzeisky

(2008). Foreigners’ impact on European societies: Public views and perceptions in a cross-national comparative perspective. International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 49, 5–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020715207088585

58.

Semyonov

Raijman

Yom-Tov

Schmidt

(2004). Population size, perceived threat, and exclusion: A multiple-indicators analysis of attitudes toward foreigners in Germany. Social Science Research, 33, 681–701. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2003.11.003

59.

Stein

(2021, June 22). Fauci warns dangerous delta variant is the greatest threat to U.S. COVID efforts. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/06/22/1008859705/delta-variant-coronavirus-unvaccinated-u-s-covid-surge

60.

Stephan

W. G.

Boniecki

K. A.

Ybarra

Bettencourt

Ervin

K. S.

Jackson

L. A.

McNatt

P. S.

Renfro

C. L

. (2002). The role of threats in the racial attitudes of Blacks and Whites. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1242–1254. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672022812009

61.

Stephan

W. G.

Renfro

C. L.

Davis

M. D.

(2008). The role of threat in intergroup relations. In Wagner

Tropp

L. R.

Finchilescu

Tredoux

(Eds.), Improving intergroup relations: Building on the legacy of Thomas F. Pettigrew (pp. 55–72). Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444303117.ch5

62.

Stephan

W. G.

Ybarra

Morrison

K. R.

(2009). Intergroup threat theory. In Nelson

T. D.

(Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 43–59). Psychology Press.

63.

Tabri

Hollingshead

Wohl

M. J. A.

(2020). Framing COVID-19 as an existential threat predicts anxious arousal and prejudice towards Chinese people. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mpbtr

64.

Taylor

M. C.

(1998). How White attitudes vary with the racial composition of local populations: Numbers count. American Sociological Review, 63, 512–535. https://doi.org/10.2307/2657265

65.

Tessler

Choi

Kao

(2020). The anxiety of being Asian American: Hate crimes and negative biases during the COVID-19 pandemic. American Journal of Criminal Justice. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09541-5

66.

The New York Times. (2021, September 2). Coronavirus (Covid-19) data in the United States. Retrieved from https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/us-states.csv.

67.

Tir

Diehl

P. F.

(1998). Demographic pressure and interstate conflict: Linking population growth and density to militarized disputes and wars, 1930–89. Journal of Peace Research, 35, 319–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343398035003004

68.

Tromberg

B. J.

Schwetz

T. A.

Pérez-Stable

E. J.

Hodes

R. J.

Woychik

R. P.

Bright

R. A.

Fleurence

R. L.

Collins

F. S.

(2020). Rapid scaling up of Covid-19 diagnostic testing in the United States — The NIH RADx Initiative. New England Journal of Medicine, 383, 1071–1077. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmsr2022263

69.

Tropp

L. R.

Pettigrew

T. F.

(2005). Differential relationships between intergroup contact and affective and cognitive dimensions of prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1145–1158. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167205274854

70.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2020, May 11). Employment situation news release. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_05082020.htm

71.

Wagner

Christ

Pettigrew

T. F.

Stellmacher

Wolf

(2006). Prejudice and minority proportion: Contact instead of threat effects. Social Psychology Quarterly, 69, 380–390. https://doi.org/10.1177/019027250606900406

72.

Zhao

Chen

Y.-M.

Wang

Song

Z.-G.

Tao

Z.-W.

Tian

J.-H.

Pei

Y.-Y.

Yuan

M.-L.

Zhang

Y.-L.

Dai

F.-H.

Liu

Wang

Q.-M.

Zheng

J.-J.

Holmes

E. C.

Zhang

Y.-Z.

(2020). A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China. Nature, 579, 265–269. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2008-3

73.

Zhou

(2020, June 23). Trump’s racist references to the coronavirus are his latest effort to stoke xenophobia. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2020/6/23/21300332/trump-coronavirus-racism-asian-americans

74.

Zou

L. X.

Cheryan

(2017). Two axes of subordination: A new model of racial position. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112, 696–717. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000080

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.03 MB

Early perceptions of COVID-19 intensity and anti-Asian prejudice among White Americans

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material