Narrow prototypes of Asian subgroups in the United States: Implications for the Stop Asian Hate movement

The Stop Asian Hate movement is a collective for several anti-Asian-violence rallies and organizations in the United States (US). Research indicates that when asked to think about who is Asian, Americans' prototype primarily comprises East Asian individuals (e.g., people from China, Japan, Korea) at the exclusion of people from other regions of Asia (e.g., South Asia). The current work extends this prototypicality research to examine implications for social justice movements. We focused on the Stop Asian Hate movement, which was designed to raise awareness and protest racial discrimination directed towards Asian Americans, particularly in light of COVID-19. Three studies tested whether people's prototypes regarding who is Asian influenced who they believe is represented by the Stop Asian Hate movement, as well as potential implications of this bias. Compared to South Asians, people judged East Asians as more represented by the Stop Asian Hate movement (Study 1). When described as being the victim of a hate crime, participants perceived East Asian targets to be more credible, more traumatized, and their reporting of the crime on the SAAPI website was deemed more appropriate, compared to South Asian targets (Studies 2-3), effects that were mediated by judgments of prototypicality (Study 3).