People are searching 'kill Muslims' in the US following terror attacks

'If people are making expressive searches about Muslims, it’s likely to be tied to anti-Muslim hate crime'

People attend a vigil for shooting victims in San Bernardino. (Getty Images)

The top Google search in California in the week following the San Bernardino massacre with the word "Muslims" in it was "kill Muslims".

When anti-Muslim sentiment is at its highest, for example during the controversy over the "ground zero mosque" in 2010 or around the anniversary of 9/11, hate crimes tend to also be at their highest.

According to an analysis by the New York Times of weekly data from 2004 to 2013, there is a direct correlation between anti-Muslim searches and anti-Muslim hate crimes.

While Google searches suffer from selection bias because they are not a random sample, the restriction may actualy help search data predict hate crimes.

They represent what people wonder about for long enough to ask a question and read the answers.

Susan Flake, a social psychologist at Princeton University, explained how the searches could predict future hate crimes.

"If someone is willing to say ‘I hate them’ or ‘they disgust me,'" she said, "we know that those emotions are as good a predictor of behavior as actual intent.

"If people are making expressive searches about Muslims, it’s likely to be tied to anti-Muslim hate crime."

In Britain, a spike in religiously motivated hate crime followed the terror attacks in Paris, while a YouGov poll for The Times found public support for allowing refugees to settle in Britain had slumped.