Who Is Asian?
This academic research tests the hypothesis that "folk theories" of Asianness can reveal a strong bias toward the idea that East Asian = Asian.
Executive Summary
Public perception of who qualifies as "Asian" is often narrowly focused on East Asians, a bias that can lead to exclusionary product design and flawed data. I designed and executed a three-task quantitative study to measure this bias, proving that users default to an East Asian prototype. Critically, my research also revealed a clear solution: providing more specific sub-categories (e.g., "South Asian," "Southeast Asian") dramatically improves identification accuracy. This foundational work directly secured a $280,000 NSF grant to apply these findings to combat bias in AI.