Do Exclusionary Policies Reduce Cognitive Bandwidth and Harm Economic Outcomes of Marginalized Groups?

Last registered on July 15, 2024

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Do Exclusionary Policies Reduce Cognitive Bandwidth and Harm Economic Outcomes of Marginalized Groups?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0012509
Initial registration date
December 19, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
December 21, 2023, 8:02 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
July 15, 2024, 6:43 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region
Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
UCLouvain
PI Affiliation
IIMB
PI Affiliation
IE University

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2023-12-20
End date
2024-08-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Economic decisions and productivity suffer when cognitive resources are limited. Recent papers have shown, for example, that productivity is reduced when poverty consumes mental resources (Kaur et al. 2023). We test whether political constraints impact economic outcomes through similar channels. In particular, we experimentally examine whether a minority’s uncertainty about their status within a nation generates psychological effects comparable to those generated by financial concerns. We test this with a labour market experiment in West Benga and online throughout India. Workers complete data-processing tasks and we randomize incidental exposure to two types of exclusionary policies—policies that pose a direct, material threat and policies that pose a more symbolic threat. We test whether exposure to both types of policy affects productivity and cognitive outcomes.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Banerjee, Ritwik et al. 2024. "Do Exclusionary Policies Reduce Cognitive Bandwidth and Harm Economic Outcomes of Marginalized Groups?." AEA RCT Registry. July 15. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.12509-2.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention (Hidden)
We hire approximately 1500 Indians in West Bengal to work on basic data entry and information processing tasks. Workers are hired for half a day and work on tasks such as tagging the sentiment in Tweets or transcribing text from subtitles embedded in photos. The tagged Tweets and transcriptions are stored in a database that will be used by researchers in a separate project exploring human-machine interactions. We randomize whether workers encounter content that mentions exclusionary policies. This content is embedded in the Tweets as each Tweet contains a retweet of a news story about government policies. Thus we have two treatment arms and one control arm. In the symbolic treatment arm, majority of the Tweets that are tagged refer to news stories about policies that symbolically exclude minorities. In the material treatment arm, majority of the Tweets refer to news stories about policies that materially exclude minorities. In the control group, all Tweets refer to anodyne policies that do not mention national identity or religion—for example, new regulations about registering pet dogs. Our study investigates two main outcomes. We measure how exposure to exclusionary policies affects productivity on the unrelated transcription task. We also give workers the opportunity to select one of two payment contracts—either a piece rate for each transcription that turns out to be accurate or a contract based on bonuses for being amongst the best performers in a group. We measure how exposure to exclusionary policies changes the probability of choosing the “wrong” contract in terms of earnings (the top performing workers should choose the bonus while everyone else should choose the piece rate). Our main outcomes are accompanied by tests of cognitively demanding tasks (Raven’s Matrices and a numerical Stroop task) drawn from the psychology literature. These allow us to establish whether the treatments increase cognitive load as hypothesised.

We will do a second round of data collection completely online. The online experiment will largely follow the same protocol as the in-person study. Our main outcome variable will remain the same as above. We will use numerical Stroop task and emotional Stroop task to uncover the underlying mechanisms.
Intervention Start Date
2023-12-20
Intervention End Date
2024-07-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1. Productivity: the number of tweets correctly transcribed in the transcription task
2. Mistakes: choosing the bonus contract when piece-rate is optimal OR choosing piece rate when the bonus contract
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
We will score transcriptions with a fuzzy matching algorithm that ignores small errors like misplaced punctuation or the incorrect case.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We invite workers in West Bengal to complete data-processing tasks. We randomize whether they are incidentally exposed to one of two types of exclusionary policies—policies that pose a direct, material threat and policies that pose a more symbolic threat. The control group is only exposed to anodyne policies—for example, new regulations about registering pet dogs. We test whether exposure to both types of policy affects productivity and cognitive outcomes.

We will do a second round of data collection completely online. The online experiment will largely follow the same protocol as the in-person study.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization is done within Qualtrics. It is at the individual level and we stratify according to religion.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1
Sample size: planned number of observations
750 Muslim individuals and 750 Hindu individuals in person 1000 Muslim individuals and 1000 Hindu individuals online
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
In person: 375 individuals will see the symbolic policies; 375 will see the mixed (material + symbolic) policies and 750 will see the control policies.

Online: Approximately 650 individuals will see each type of policy (symbolic, mixed, control)
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
In the most pessimistic scenario, we estimate that we will need at least 300 Muslims per treatment group to estimate a treatment effect of 0.23 standard deviations in terms of productivity. We would need about at least 180 Muslims per treatment group to detect a shift in the error rate from 1/4 per session to 1/3 per session. These calculations have been done with a significance level of 0.025 to account for multiple hypothesis testing.
Supporting Documents and Materials

Documents

Document Name
Updated pre-registered hypotheses for online
Document Type
other
Document Description
Description of main hypotheses, manipulation checks, and outcomes used to test mechanisms.
File
Updated pre-registered hypotheses for online

MD5:

SHA1:

Uploaded At: July 15, 2024

Document Name
Pre-registered hypotheses
Document Type
other
Document Description
Description of main hypotheses, manipulation checks, and outcomes used to test mechanisms.
File
Pre-registered hypotheses

MD5: d3977540dfa37b7a0c853d791e5f0770

SHA1: d505294e140e5f27dfd4b0fde1db6d0d134e585e

Uploaded At: December 06, 2023

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Comité d’éthique ISPOLE (Université catholique de Louvain)
IRB Approval Date
2022-01-29
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials