President Donald Trump frequently refers to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus.”
New research indicates that his followers are more likely than other Americans to admit they would engage in discriminatory behavior toward people of Asian descent.
Besides trust in President Trump, the new study in the International Journal of Public Health has uncovered several factors related to negative attitudes toward Asians amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was difficult to follow the news cycle without reading a story about an Asian American being verbally harassed or physically attacked, or of Americans avoiding Asian-owned restaurants and businesses.
Participants with more trust in science and greater knowledge of COVID-19 symptoms, on the other hand, reported less bias.
The study controlled for gender, age, race, education, sexual orientation, political affiliation, and whether people were practicing social distancing.
“The biggest caveat to our study is that it did not use an experimental design to determine the causal relationship among variables. »