IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/295127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disease and prejudice: risk attribution to ethno-racial groups over the course of a pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Bogatzki, Tamara
  • Glaese, Jana Catalina
  • Stier, Julia

Abstract

Past research suggests that disease outbreaks drive prejudice towards minorities as they increase economic and disease threats. Based on an open-ended survey question distributed to 7,902 German residents over the course of one year of the Covid-19 pandemic (April 2020 to April 2021), we investigate the link between life-threatening events and ethno-racial prejudice. We find that pandemic-related threats only drive respondents’ tendency to scapegoat ethno-racial groups if they hold left and center leaning ideologies. However, for far-right supporters who are the most likely to attribute the spread of Covid-19 to ethno-racial groups, pandemic-related threats do not affect that attribution. We further find that threat theories are of limited relevance for explaining which ethno-racial groups are targeted: respondents held Chinese accountable at the beginning of the pandemic but quickly shifted their attention to immigrants – a salient figure in pre-Covid-19 rightist rhetoric. We show that ideology, more than pandemic-induced threat, continues to drive prejudice and demonstrate the under-utilized advantages of using open-ended survey questions for understanding the dynamics of intergroup prejudice.

Suggested Citation

  • Bogatzki, Tamara & Glaese, Jana Catalina & Stier, Julia, 2023. "Disease and prejudice: risk attribution to ethno-racial groups over the course of a pandemic," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Latest Ar, pages 1-23.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:295127
    DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2023.2235084
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/295127/1/Full-text-article-Bogatzki-et-al-Disease-and-prejudice.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/1369183X.2023.2235084?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aarã˜E, Lene & Petersen, Michael Bang & Arceneaux, Kevin, 2017. "The Behavioral Immune System Shapes Political Intuitions: Why and How Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity Underlie Opposition to Immigration," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 111(2), pages 277-294, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dražanová, Lenka & Gonnot, Jérôme & Heidland, Tobias & Krüger, Finja, 2022. "Understanding differences in attitudes to immigration: A meta-analysis of individual-level factors," Kiel Working Papers 2235, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    2. Xavier Fernández-i-Marín & Carolin H Rapp & Christian Adam & Oliver James & Anita Manatschal, 2021. "Discrimination against mobile European Union citizens before and during the first COVID-19 lockdown: Evidence from a conjoint experiment in Germany," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(4), pages 741-761, December.
    3. Olga Semenova & Julia Apalkova & Marina Butovskaya, 2021. "Spatial and Social Behavior of Single and Coupled Individuals of Both Sexes during COVID-19 Lockdown Regime in Russia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-15, April.
    4. Kevin Arceneaux & Johanna Dunaway & Stuart Soroka, 2018. "Elites are people, too: The effects of threat sensitivity on policymakers’ spending priorities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-8, April.
    5. Jordan Mansell, 2020. "Causation and Behavior: The Necessity and Benefits of Incorporating Evolutionary Thinking into Political Science," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1677-1698, September.
    6. Jozef N. Coppelmans & Fieke M. A. Wagemans & Lotte F. Dillen, 2024. "An empirical investigation of emotion and the criminal law: towards a “criminalization bias”?," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17, December.
    7. Mark Pickup & Eline A. de Rooij & Clifton van der Linden & Matthew J. Goodwin, 2021. "Brexit, COVID‐19, and attitudes toward immigration in Britain," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2184-2193, September.
    8. Adam M. Enders & Jason Gainous & Kevin M. Wagner, 2022. "Say it again with feeling: Issue ownership and candidate communication using Twitter," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(4), pages 959-974, July.
    9. Lenka Dražanová & Jérôme Gonnot & Tobias Heidland & Finja Krüger, 2023. "Which individual-level factors explain public attitudes toward immigration? a meta-analysis," Post-Print hal-04261633, HAL.
    10. Vanda Veréb & Helena Nobre & Minoo Farhangmehr, 2022. "Cosmopolitan tourists: the most resilient travellers in the face of COVID-19," Service Business, Springer;Pan-Pacific Business Association, vol. 16(3), pages 503-527, September.
    11. Theodore Samore & Daniel M T Fessler & Adam Maxwell Sparks & Colin Holbrook, 2021. "Of pathogens and party lines: Social conservatism positively associates with COVID-19 precautions among U.S. Democrats but not Republicans," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-26, June.
    12. Rheault, Ludovic & Musulan, Andreea, 2020. "Explaining Support for COVID-19 Cell Phone Contact Tracing," SocArXiv 8wcgz, Center for Open Science.
    13. Yoshiaki Kubo & Isamu Okada, 2022. "COVID-19 health certification reduces outgroup bias: evidence from a conjoint experiment in Japan," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-11, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:295127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.