DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-024-00407-1

Abstract: Anti-Black bias is a persistent issue in the United States. An increasingly influential view posits that pathogen stress may be a key driver, whilst experimental research suggests disease avoidance motives can increase bias. However, whether pathogen stress increases bias through increasing disease avoidance motives has not been demonstrated in population-based work. We use discrete measurements of prejudice and disease avoidance motives to test this relationship. Namely, we assess whether pathogen stress relates to anti-Black bias at the state and metropolitan level and whether this occurs through increasing disease avoidance motives. We first assess whether increased pathogen stress predicts Google searches for a common anti-Black slur and if this effect is mediated by disease avoidance motives. Results found such a mediation. We then test this relationship using implicit and explicit bias, seeing whether germ aversion mediates the effect of pathogen stress on both operationalisations of prejudice. Whilst results found germ aversion to be an important driver of explicit prejudice, the mediation relationship did not hold for most measures. Our work is the first to comprehensively test if disease avoidance motives may influence the relationship between pathogen stress and searching for anti-Black racial slurs and implicit and explicit bias. We discuss implications and directions for future work.