Measuring Employment Discrimination Through Controlled Experiments

Bendick, Marc; Jackson, Charles W.; Reinoso, Victor A.

doi:10.4324/9780429497896-15

Cited by 21 publications

(27 citation statements)

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“…Rather than serve as the great equalizer, a higher education credential, even one from a highly prestigious institution, may not fully erase employer biases -implicit or explicit -against blacks. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, researchers have consistently found evidence of racial discrimination in the labor market using a variety of methods (Bendick, Jackson, and Reinoso 1994;Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004;Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991;Pager 2007a). No research, however, has explored whether employers engage in racial discrimination against applicants with prestigious college degrees.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discrimination in the Credential Society: An Audit Study of Race and College Selectivity in the Labor Market

Gaddis

2018

Preprint

114

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Racial inequality in economic outcomes, particularly among the college-educated, persists throughout U.S. society. Scholars debate whether this inequality stems from racial differences in human capital (e.g. college selectivity, GPA, college major) or employer discrimination against black job candidates. However, limited measures of human capital and the inherent difficulties in measuring discrimination using observational data make determining the cause of racial differences in labor market outcomes a difficult endeavor. In this research, I examine employment opportunities for white and black graduates of elite top-ranked universities versus high-ranked but less selective institutions. Using an audit design, I create matched candidate pairs and apply for 1,008 jobs on a national job search website. I also exploit existing birth record data in selecting names to control for differences across social class within racialized names. The results show that although a credential from an elite university results in more employer responses for all candidates, black candidates from elite universities only do as well as white candidates from less selective universities. Moreover, race results in a double penalty: when employers respond to black candidates it is for jobs with lower starting salaries and lower prestige than those of white peers. These racial differences suggest that a bachelor’s degree, even one from an elite institution, cannot fully counteract the importance of race in the labor market. Thus, both discrimination and differences in human capital contribute to racial economic inequality.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discrimination in the Credential Society: An Audit Study of Race and College Selectivity in the Labor Market

Gaddis

2018

Preprint

114

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“…The existence of implicit attitudes involving significant social and moral categories such as race, gender, religion, or disability has motivated a large body of research on the role that implicit attitudes might play in explaining persistent discriminatory behavior and unjust social outcomes. Subsequent research has investigated the possible link between implicit attitudes and employment discrimination (Bendick et al 1994;Moss-Racusin et al 2012), housing practices (Ahmed and Hammarstedt 2008), health care disparities (Sabin et al 2009), and policing (Correll et al 2002;Payne 2006;Sim et al 2013). For example, researchers studying implicit bias in policing find evidence for implicit attitudes associating race with the presence of weapons, and that this sometimes predicts results in laboratory first-person shooter video game experiments (Glaser and Knowles 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit attitudes and the ability argument

Buckwalter¹

2018

Philos Stud

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According to one picture of the mind, decisions and actions are largely the result of automatic cognitive processing beyond our ability to control. This picture is in tension with a foundational principle in ethics that moral responsibility for behavior requires the ability to control it. The discovery of implicit attitudes contributes to this tension. According to the ability argument against moral responsibility, if we cannot control implicit attitudes, and implicit attitudes cause behavior, then we cannot be morally responsible for that behavior. The purpose of this paper is to refute the ability argument. Drawing on both scientific evidence in cognitive science and philosophical arguments in ethics and action theory, I argue that it is invalid and unsound because current evidence is insufficient to establish the premises that (1) implicit attitudes are uncontrollable, (2) that they significantly cause behavior, (3) that responsibility always requires ability, and (4) that even if uncontrollable attitudes did fully cause behavior, this entails that the behavior they cause is uncontrollable. The rejection of the ability argument questions the priority of the unconscious over the conscious mind in cognitive science, deprioritizes ability in theories of moral responsibility in ethics, and provides a strong reason to uphold moral responsibility for implicitly biased behavior.

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“…In the U.S., the Urban Institute conducted the first in-person audits of hiring discrimination against Hispanic men applying for entry-level jobs in Chicago and San Diego in 1989 (Cross, Kenney, Mell, & Zimmerman, 1989). Several in-person and correspondence tests of hiring discrimination against minority groups have also been conducted in the U.S. and European countries since then (Bendick, Jackson, & Reinoso, 1994;Bendick, Jackson, Reinoso, & Hodges, 1991;Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004;Bursell, 2007;Carlsson & Rooth, 2007Goldberg, Mourinho, & Kulke, 1995;Kaas & Manger, 2011;Nunley, Pugh, Romero, & Seals, 2014;Pager, 2003;Pager, Western, & Bonikowski, 2009;Wood et al, 2009;Turner, Fix, & Struyk, 1991).4 4F 37 In addition, audits have been used to examine discrimination in automobile sales (Ayres, 1991;Ayres & Siegelman, 1995), taxicab service (Ridley, Baton, & Outtz, 1989), home mortgage inquiries (Galster, 1993;Turner & Skidmore, 1999), homeowners' insurance (Wissoker, Zimmermann, & Galster, 1998), and the provision of medical care (Schulman et al, 1999).…”

Section: Paired Testing In Other Marketsmentioning

confidence: 99%