Harmful behavior against out-group members often rises during periods of economic hardship and health pandemics. Here, we test the widespread concern that the Covid-19 crisis may fuel hostility against people from other nations. Using a controlled money-burning task, we elicited hostile behavior among a nationally representative sample (n = 2,186) in the Czech Republic during the first wave of the pandemic. We provide evidence that exogenously elevating the salience of the Covid-19 crisis increases hostility against foreigners from the EU, USA and Asia. This behavioral response is similar across various demographic sub-groups. Further, we observe zero to small negative effects for both domestic out-groups and in-groups, suggesting that the salience of Covid-19 might negatively affect behavior not only towards foreigners but to other people more generally, though these findings are not conclusive. The results underscore the importance of not inflaming anti-foreigner sentiments and suggest the need to monitor impacts of the crisis on behavior in the social domain.

在经济困难和健康大流行期间，针对群体外成员的有害行为往往会增加。在这里，我们测试了人们普遍担心的 Covid-19 危机可能会加剧对其他国家人民的敌意。在第一波大流行期间，我们使用一项受控的烧钱任务，在捷克共和国的一个具有全国代表性的样本 (n = 2,186) 中引发了敌对行为。我们提供的证据表明，从外部提升 Covid-19 危机的显着性会增加对来自欧盟、美国和亚洲的外国人的敌意。这种行为反应在不同的人口统计子群体中是相似的。此外，我们观察到对国内外群体和内群体的负面影响为零到很小，这表明 Covid-19 的显着性可能不仅对外国人的行为产生负面影响，而且更普遍地对其他人的行为产生负面影响，尽管这些发现并不是决定性的。结果强调了不煽动排外情绪的重要性，并表明有必要监测危机对社会领域行为的影响。