The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential impact of U.S. government official's comments regarding the source of COVID-19 on individuals' perceptions and tendencies to blame Asian victims of hate crimes in the U.S. Moreover, we examined how political conservatism and beliefs about the origin and spreading of COVID-19 impact participants' victim blaming toward Asian victims of hate crimes. Participants (N = 100; 46 women, 54 men) were recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were randomly assigned to read one of the two scenarios that either discussed COVID-19 with no direct inferences of blame toward the origin of COVID-19 or with directly placed blame on the origin of COVID-19. There were no significant main effects of the scenario or participants' gender on blaming the victim. However, we found that men who were presented COVID-19 origin information were more likely to blame Asian victims compared to men who were not given origin information. Moreover, political conservatism was a significant predictor of blaming Asian victims of hate crimes. Possible explanations for the results and future research directions were discussed.

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Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. has experienced a large increase in anti-Asian hate crimes due to the mistaken and pervasive belief that COVID-19 was a Chinese virus. While the rise in hate crimes is welldocumented, not much research has been conducted into the characteristics that predict an individual's intention to harm Asian Americans. Therefore, we examined individuals' intention to harm Asian Americans related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants (N = 94) were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and were given 10 real-world scenarios of acts of aggression toward Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants responded to three questions for each real-world scenario, and right-wing authoritarianism and four types of aggression (i.e., physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, hostility) were examined as predictors of individuals' intention to harm Asian Americans. We found that right-wing authoritarianism, physical aggression, and anger were significant predictors of one's intention to harm Asian Americans. However, verbal aggression and hostility were not significant predictors of one's intention to harm Asian Americans. Implications of these findings are discussed since these findings can assist researchers' understanding of issues pertaining to prejudice and racism related to the COVID-19 pandemic.