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Examining Attitudes toward Asians throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic with Repeated Cross-Sectional Survey Experiments

Yao Lu, Neeraj Kaushal, Xiaoning Huang, S. Michael Gaddis, Ariela Schachter

Sociological Science August 30, 2024
10.15195/v11.a28


This study examines how COVID-induced and general attitudes toward Asians have changed over the course of the pandemic using nationally representative survey experiments in 2020 and 2022. First, we measured COVID-induced anti-Asian attitudes as the effect of a treatment reminding respondents of the pandemic on whether respondents would be willing to live or work with someone who is East or South Asian. The results suggest that the COVID-19 treatment worsened attitudes toward East and South Asians in the social domain and toward East Asians in the economic domain in 2020, but not in 2022. Second, we measured change in general attitudes toward Asians by comparing the control group responses in 2020 and 2022. The results demonstrate that, over the same period, general attitudes toward Asians have not improved despite growing attention toward anti-Asian biases. This finding underscores the persistence of general negative attitudes toward Asians beyond the immediate context of the pandemic and the ongoing imperative to actively address deeply ingrained biases against Asians.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Yao Lu: Department of Sociology, Columbia University
E-mail: yl2479@columbia.edu

Neeraj Kaushal: School of Social Work, Columbia University
E-mail: nk464@columbia.edu

Xiaoning Huang: Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
E-mail: jack.huang@northwestern.edu

S. Michael Gaddis: Research and Policy Partnerships, NWEA
E-mail: michael.gaddis@nwea.org

Ariela Schachter: Washington University in St. Louis
E-mail: ariela@wustl.edu

Acknowledgements: We thank Tiffany Huang, Jennifer Lee, and participants of the Experimental Design Workshop at Columbia University, and the Asia and Asian America Working Group at University of Pennsylvania for their helpful comments. This research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (1R21HD105183), the Columbia Population Research Center, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Center for Pandemic Research, and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.

Supplemental Materials

Replication Package: Study materials can be found at the Open Science Framework https://osf.io/a6ewy/.

  • Citation: Lu, Yao, Neeraj Kaushal, Xiaoning Huang, S. Michael Gaddis, and Ariela Schachter. 2024. “Examining Attitudes toward Asians throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic with Repeated Cross-Sectional Survey Experiments.” Sociological Science 11:777-788.
  • Received: October 27, 2023
  • Accepted: March 16, 2024
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Maria Abascal
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a28


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