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This experiment recreates several features of a hiring decision in a professional field. The authors use ideas from expectation states theory to formulate predictions about the evaluation of applicants in a context where they are assessed one ata time. The variables examined are sex of applicant, sex of assessor, applicant's academic record, and type of decision (whether assignment of ability or allocation of rewards). Results show that academic record had a stronger effect than either sex of assessor or sex of applicant. Effects of the latter variable were noticeable in reward allocation but not in ability assignment, and they were affected by the applicant's record: Rewards showed bias against the female candidate when her record was average but not when it was outstanding. All three findings are in clear support of the proposed hypotheses. Sex-of-assessor differences were observed only in reward allocation, also as predicted, but they did not achieve the expected statistical significance.

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