In this study, Eylem Kanol (Free University of Berlin) and Max Schaub (University of Hamburg) ask whether culture can help explain prejudice by examining the rise of antisemitism during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Their findings point to a cultural explanation—specifically, to enduring cultural scripts that link Judaism to disease and contagion. They demonstrate this by documenting the cultural script of traditional antisemitism both in canonical texts (using word embeddings) and in the minds of Germans (using a concept association task). Finally, drawing on survey and experimental data, they show how this script was (re-)activated among Christian believers during the pandemic.

You can read the paper here: https://shorturl.at/gpzw2