The Not-So-Obvious Harm of Cyberhate: Source Magnification of Hate Tweets, Unhealthy Food Choice, and the Moderating Role of Group Identification

Abstract

Guided by research demonstrating the impact of social identity threat on physical health and the source magnification framework, we investigated how hate tweets from multiple sources, relative to hate tweets from a single source, influence target group members’ health-related behavior—specififically, food choice. We conducted an online experiment with a sample of Asian Twitter users in the United States. Participants were randomly assigned to view an identical set of anti-Asian hate tweets either from a single individual or from multiple individuals. Subsequently, in an ostensibly unrelated task masked as a marketing survey, participants customized a pizza by selecting toppings from a list presenting an equal number of healthy and unhealthy toppings. We found that participants exposed to multiple-source hate tweets selected a greater number of unhealthy toppings than those exposed to single-source hate tweets. We also found that group identification was a significant moderator, with those lower in group identification more likely to choose unhealthy toppings when exposed to multiple-source hate tweets. Our findings suggest that exposure to multiple-source hate messages, relative to single-source hate messages, may exert a detrimental influence on target group members’ health to a greater extent, while highlighting a possible buffering role of group identification.