Gender and Political Conservatism as Predictors of Blaming Asian Victims of Hate Crimes in the U.S. during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential impact of U.S. government official’s comments regarding the source of COVID-19 on individuals’ perceptions and tendencies to blame Asian victims of hate crimes in the U.S. Moreover, we examined how political conservatism and beliefs about the origin and spreading of COVID-19 impact participants’ victim blaming toward Asian victims of hate crimes. Participants (N = 100; 46 women, 54 men) were recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were randomly assigned to read one of the two scenarios that either discussed COVID-19 with no direct inferences of blame toward the origin of COVID-19 or with directly placed blame on the origin of COVID-19. There were no significant main effects of the scenario or participants’ gender on blaming the victim. However, we found that men who were presented COVID-19 origin information were more likely to blame Asian victims compared to men who were not given origin information. Moreover, political conservatism was a significant predictor of blaming Asian victims of hate crimes. Possible explanations for the results and future research directions were discussed.