What’s in a name? In the current pandemic, do you prefer to call it the “coronavirus,” or the “Chinese-” or “Wuhan-Virus”? In addition to that choice being a pretty good litmus test on your partisan leanings, the push toward emphasizing the foreign origin of COVID-19 also taps into an often-observed psychological tendency to associate disease with greater levels of bias against those considered “other.” To be clear, it does seem that the government of China can be reasonably criticized for a lack of candor and accuracy in the early days of the disease’s spread. However, the social science says there is more going on here than policy criticism.

A team of researchers from Poland (Groyecka et al., 2020) recently released a study showing a positive relationship between media exposure to pathogen coverage and prejudice toward foreign nationalities. In a study conducted just last month, they found that hearing about the coronavirus caused participants to display more negative attitudes toward those from other countries regardless of these other countries’ experience with the virus. “Prejudice against foreign groups was positively related to media exposure and thus to exposure to information about the coronavirus,” the team concluded, “regardless of the extent of COVID-19 outbreak in the assessed countries.” In this post, I will share some thoughts on this research and its implications.

The Research: Psychological Distance

Using 652 research participants, the team conducted their studies in the UK and Poland. They manipulated exposure to information about the current coronavirus epidemic, and then measured bias against eight nationalities: Hungarian, Mongolian, Italian, German, Chinese, Israeli, Russian, American, and Polish (the last one being measured in the UK, but not in Poland).

Consistent with prior research, they found that the information strongly activated the biases. Importantly, these biases don’t seem to stem from any specific criticism or risk assessment relating to that nationality. Indeed, they report on prior research showing that disease-related bias is not specific to any nationality, but just focuses on what is foreign. Consistent with that, the researchers found that the measured bias was similar across nations, but stronger against Italians, owing to the fact that Italy was experiencing the most intense struggle with the virus at the time the study was conducted.

The general tendency to focus on what is foreign suggests that the bias is less of a logical matter of attributing greater risk to those from other counties, and more of a matter of creating psychological distance. We have been using the phrase “social distance” a lot, of course, but in the psychological sense, it is a mechanism of dissociating. Thinking about illness creates discomfort and in response, we seek greater reassurance through greater distance from what seems to be “other.” The fact that this bias would manifest as xenophobia and racism is likely to be leftover evolutionary baggage from the times when humans viewed anyone not of the same tribe as a potential threat.

The Response Strategy: Identification

If you find yourself defending an international company, or a party that could otherwise be viewed as “foreign” in the wake of this virus lockdown, or in any other situation where concerns about diseases are likely to be activated, then you should expect some form of xenophobic bias. There isn’t a perfect cure, but in shaping a message, there are a few imperfect vaccines that you could draw upon. The main point is to emphasize rhetorical “identification,” or some kind of “expansion of the tribe” in the form of common ground between the party you’re representing and your fact-finders. In the case of a foreign company, you can try to reduce that distance by emphasizing three themes:

Composition

Show you are the tribe. Include background information reassuring your audience that the “company,” is composed of a great many individuals, including many nationalities and backgrounds. In other words, you are diverse, and not simply “foreign.”

Contribution

Show you contribute to the tribe. Emphasize the benefits that flow to this country: benefits that could include useful products and services, economic growth, and jobs.

Purpose

Show that you share the same purpose as the tribe. Emphasize common ground in the form of a shared goal: For example, your client just wants to be able to rely on a contract, like any of us would.

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Sorokowski, P., Groyecka, A., Kowal, M., Sorokowska, A., Białek, M., Lebuda, I., Zdybek, P. & Karwowski, M. (2020). Information about pandemic increases negative attitudes toward foreign groups: a case of COVID-19 outbreak.  Preprint: https://psyarxiv.com/j23vt/

Image credit: 123rf.com, used under license