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The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era

About one in six Asian Americans have fallen victim to anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic [J. Lee, K. Ramakrishnan, aapidata.com/blog/discrimination-survey-2022/]. By examining anti-Asian racism in the United States primarily as a domestic issue, most prior studies have overlooked the co...

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Autores principales: He, Qian, Xie, Yu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9704692/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36375070
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2212183119
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author He, Qian
Xie, Yu
author_facet He, Qian
Xie, Yu
author_sort He, Qian
collection PubMed
description About one in six Asian Americans have fallen victim to anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic [J. Lee, K. Ramakrishnan, aapidata.com/blog/discrimination-survey-2022/]. By examining anti-Asian racism in the United States primarily as a domestic issue, most prior studies have overlooked the connections between shifting US-China relations and Americans’ prejudices against the Chinese in China and, by extension, East Asian Americans. This study investigates the patterns and perceptual bases of nationality-based prejudices against Chinese amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Our nationally representative online survey experiment reveals that Americans assess a hypothetical Chinese person in China as inferior in multiple social and psychological characteristics to an otherwise identical Japanese person in Japan or East Asian American. Furthermore, subjects who perceive China as more threatening to America’s national interests assess Chinese more negatively, especially in terms of trustworthiness and morality, suggesting that perceived China threats propel Americans’ negative stereotypes about Chinese. A contextual analysis further indicates that counties with a higher share of Trump voters in 2016 tend to perceive all East Asian–origin groups similarly as a racial outgroup. By contrast, residents in predominantly Democrat-voting counties tend to perceive Chinese in China more negatively relative to Asian Americans, despite broadly viewing East Asians more favorably. Overall, this study underscores the often-overlooked relationships between the prevailing anti-Asian sentiments in the United States and the US-China geopolitical tensions and America’s domestic political polarization.
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spelling pubmed-97046922023-05-14 The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era He, Qian Xie, Yu Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences About one in six Asian Americans have fallen victim to anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic [J. Lee, K. Ramakrishnan, aapidata.com/blog/discrimination-survey-2022/]. By examining anti-Asian racism in the United States primarily as a domestic issue, most prior studies have overlooked the connections between shifting US-China relations and Americans’ prejudices against the Chinese in China and, by extension, East Asian Americans. This study investigates the patterns and perceptual bases of nationality-based prejudices against Chinese amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Our nationally representative online survey experiment reveals that Americans assess a hypothetical Chinese person in China as inferior in multiple social and psychological characteristics to an otherwise identical Japanese person in Japan or East Asian American. Furthermore, subjects who perceive China as more threatening to America’s national interests assess Chinese more negatively, especially in terms of trustworthiness and morality, suggesting that perceived China threats propel Americans’ negative stereotypes about Chinese. A contextual analysis further indicates that counties with a higher share of Trump voters in 2016 tend to perceive all East Asian–origin groups similarly as a racial outgroup. By contrast, residents in predominantly Democrat-voting counties tend to perceive Chinese in China more negatively relative to Asian Americans, despite broadly viewing East Asians more favorably. Overall, this study underscores the often-overlooked relationships between the prevailing anti-Asian sentiments in the United States and the US-China geopolitical tensions and America’s domestic political polarization. National Academy of Sciences 2022-11-14 2022-11-22 /pmc/articles/PMC9704692/ /pubmed/36375070 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2212183119 Text en Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Social Sciences
He, Qian
Xie, Yu
The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era
title The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era
title_full The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era
title_fullStr The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era
title_full_unstemmed The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era
title_short The moral filter of patriotic prejudice: How Americans view Chinese in the COVID-19 era
title_sort moral filter of patriotic prejudice: how americans view chinese in the covid-19 era
topic Social Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9704692/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36375070
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2212183119
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