This article asks whether culture—understood as interconnected “cultural scripts” linking group identities to negative phenomena—helps explain rises in antisemitism. Using three linked studies, the authors isolate a script that historically links Judaism with disease, document an increase in antisemitic attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic among Christian believers, and use association tasks and priming experiments to show that elements of the script are present and can be triggered in respondents’ minds.
Data and methods
The paper combines automated text analysis of a corpus of antisemitic texts to isolate the cultural script, large-scale survey data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 17,800) to detect attitude changes, an additional survey (n = 2,000) plus a concept-association task to probe mental associations, and two priming experiments to test triggerable elements of the script.
Automated text analysis Large survey during COVID-19 Concept-association task
Main findings
The authors report an increase in antisemitic attitudes among Christian believers during the pandemic and argue this is consistent with activation of a cultural script linking Judaism and disease. The concept-association task and priming experiments are used to demonstrate that elements of that script exist in the minds of Christian believers and can be experimentally triggered. The abstract frames these results as evidence for culture as a source of negative out-group attitudes and presents the mixed suite of methods as a novel approach to studying such cultural roots.
- Automated corpus analysis isolates a cultural script in antisemitic texts.
- Large surveys document attitudinal increase among Christian believers during COVID-19; follow-up tasks and experiments probe mental presence and activation of the script.
