Blaming minorities during public health crises: post-COVID-19 substantive and methodological reflections from the UK

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using an original survey fielded during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper contributes to understanding the phenomenon of blaming minorities during health crises and public perceptions of minorities more generally. We pose direct and indirect (split-sample) survey questions that gauge explicit blame of minorities, and potential implicit blame of particular groups and intergroup bias. Findings reveal that significant numbers tend to explicitly blame minorities for the spread of COVID-19; when asked about behaviors of the UK’s two largest religious minority groups – Muslims and Hindus – clear majorities blame these groups, with smaller percentages appearing to blame the country’s dominant ingroup. We test hypotheses drawn from theories of perceived threat, locus of control and authoritarianism: blaming minorities is expected to be associated with COVID-19-related (disease) threat, generally low sense of personal control, concern about the country’s lack of control over COVID-19, and general need for social conformity.