Neither Asian nor American: How COVID-19 impacted Asian Americans’ identity and well-being

Asians and Asian Americans have experienced increased discrimination due to COVID-19. Building on the rejection-identification model (RIM; Branscombe et al., 1999) and the rejection-disidentification model (RDIM; Jasinskaja-Lahti et al., 2009), we sought to examine how COVID-19 discrimination has impacted Asian Americans’ identities and well-being. Asian and Asian American individuals currently residing in the United States were recruited to participate in our study. The relations between perceived COVID-19 discrimination, identification, and well-being were examined correlationally (Study 1) and experimentally (Studies 2 and 3). Across 3 studies, COVID-19 discrimination is associated with increased levels of anxiety and stress but decreased identification with being American. At the same time, perceived discrimination was unrelated to participants’ Asian (Study 1, 2, and 3) and specific ethnic (Study 3) identities. In Study 2, we experimentally demonstrated that reading about the negative impact of COVID-19 on Asian Americans interacted with perceived discrimination to decrease the extent to which participants identified as American, which has implications for anxiety and stress. Results from Study 2 supported the RDIM predictions and was replicated in a US-born sample in Study 3. Our studies suggest that Asian and Asian Americans’ well-being is harmed through the decrease of a positive identity (i.e., being an American) without the compensation of another positive identity (i.e., being Asian or being a specific ethnicity) to protect them from the negative impactive of COVID-19 discrimination. Thus, Asian Americans need support now more than ever.