Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores*

Abstract

Examining the performance of cashiers in a French grocery store chain, we find that manager bias negatively affects minority job performance. In the stores studied, cashiers work with different managers on different days and their schedules are determined quasi-randomly. When minority cashiers, but not majority cashiers, are scheduled to work with managers who are biased (as determined by an implicit association test), they are absent more often, spend less time at work, scan items more slowly, and take more time between customers. This appears to be because biased managers interact less with minorities, leading minorities to exert less effort. Manager bias has consequences for the average performance of minority workers: while on average minority and majority workers perform equivalently, on days where managers are unbiased, minorities perform significantly better than do majority workers. The findings are consistent with statistical discrimination in hiring whereby because minorities underperform when assigned to biased managers, the firm sets a higher hiring standard for minorities to get similar average performance from minority and nonminority workers.

Racial wage differentials in developed countries

“…Stereotyping, such as a widespread belief that people from a certain racial or ethnic background work less hard than others, may be a reason for employers not offering a job to racial minority applicants, or offering them lower wages, at least initially. Racial stereotypes may even become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Recent research on French supermarket workers suggests that those belonging to a racial minority work less hard if they have racially biased supervisors [2].…”

The Whys of Social Exclusion: Insights from Behavioral Economics

“…Implicit prejudicial attitudes can be self-fulfilling, just as explicit prejudice and discrimination can be (Akerlof 1976). In the empirical study of grocery store cashiers in France mentioned at the beginning of this essay, workers of African origin were Hoff and Walsh substantially less productive on the days they were supervised by implicitly biased managers, where implicit bias was measured by the Implicit Association Test (Glover, Pallais, Pariente 2017). Bertrand, Chugh, and Mullainathan (2005) argue that IATs tap unconscious attitudes, which activate a different part of the brain than the parts that engage in conscious deliberation.…”

“…productive than other clerks except on days when they were supervised by managers implicitly biased against minorities; on these days, they were of average productivity (Glover, Pallais, and Pariente 2017). A belief that a race, gender, caste, or other ascriptive group is inferior can affect how others treat members of the group and how members of the group feel about themselves, creating productivity differences that sustain the beliefs, although no inherent productivity differences exist (Hoff and Stiglitz 2010;World Bank 2015).…”

Does Implicit Bias Predict Dictator Giving?

“…In Africa, Lowes et al [15] find evidence of ethnic homophily in the DRC capital, though Berge et al [16] find little evidence of ethnic biases in Nairobi. In Europe, implicit bias has been predictive of negative hiring conditions [17] and job performance [18]. The alleged interaction between implicit bias and labor market decisions suggests a role for further economic analysis in other areas of decision-making, including the open questions of pro-social behavior.…”