Republicans Discriminated Against Chinese-born Americans Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Asian Americans became targets of increasingly hostile behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. What motivated this? Fears of contagion arising from a behavioral immune system (BIS) may have motivated differential treatment towards Chinese-born US residents, especially early in the pandemic and among those vulnerable to COVID-19. On the other hand, rhetoric from right-wing media figures may have legitimated anti-Asian behavior. We explore these questions using a behavioral game with a representative sample of Americans at two points: in spring and fall 2020. Participants were partnered with a US- or Chinese-born US resident. The average American treated Chinese-born US residents worse compared to US-born residents in the spring but not the fall, when China was no longer a COVID-19 hotspot. But among Republicans, likely more receptive to right-wing rhetoric, unequal treatment was both stronger in the spring and persisted into the fall.

Assessing the Causal Link between the COVID-19 Pandemic and Racial Discrimination

“…Our findings contribute to a growing body of evidence (e.g., Abascal et al 2021;He et al 2022;Lu et al 2021) suggesting that the media framing of COVID-19 as a threat from China negatively affected the treatment of Asian Americans not just in terms of high-profile physical attacks and verbal assaults but also in terms of more subtle, everyday forms of bias and discrimination (e.g., bias in financial support). By putting MTurk workers in the position of having to choose whether to forgo an amount of pay commensurate with the going rate for such work, our study has strong external validity.…”

“…For example, He et al (2022) found more negative attitudes about Chinese people in U.S. locations with severer COVID-19 outbreaks. Compared to the early days in the pandemic when the outbreak was associated with China, prejudice against Asians declined when China was no longer a disease hotspot, suggesting aversive behaviors that are responsive to pathogen-threat perceptions (Abascal et al 2021). Lu et al (2021) report experimental results showing that research subjects who were primed to think about COVID-19 evaluated East Asians as well as South Asian and Hispanic individuals as less desirable hypothetical roommates than people in a control condition.…”

“…To evaluate these various interpretations, we join a growing body of research and use experimental methods to assess a causal link between the COVID-19 pandemic and broader patterns of racial/ethnic discrimination (Abascal, Makovi, and Xu 2021; Bartoš et al 2021; Lu et al 2021). Investigating pandemic-fueled racism with an experimental design is important because reliance on observational evidence limits our understanding of the scope of the problem and prevents full understanding of more covert exclusionary practices that deny Asian Americans access to societal privileges and benefits.…”