Attribution bias: Evidence from a lab experiment

Last registered on November 15, 2024
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Attribution bias: Evidence from a lab experiment
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014820
Initial registration date
November 13, 2024

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
November 15, 2024, 1:53 PM EST

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
karmini sharma
Affiliation
Imperial College London
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
lily liu
PI Affiliation
stanford university
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PI Name
james fenske
PI Affiliation
university of warwick
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2024-11-14
End date
2025-04-30
Keywords
Behavior, Gender, Labor
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
In many settings, economic outcomes depend on the competence and effort of the
agents involved, and also on luck. When principals assess agents’ performance they can
suffer from attribution bias by gender: male agents may be assessed more favorably than
female agents because males will be rewarded for good luck, while women are punished for
bad luck. We conduct a laboratory experiment to test whether principals judge agents’
outcomes differently by gender. Agents perform tasks for the principals and the realized
outcomes depend on both the agents’ performance and luck. Principals then assess agents’
performance and decide what to pay the agents. We aim to vary the type of tasks performed and measure whether principals show attribution bias. We aim to extend this to study whether attribution bias exists against other minorities.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
fenske, james, lily liu and karmini sharma. 2024. "Attribution bias: Evidence from a lab experiment." AEA RCT Registry. November 15. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14820-1.0
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
In each round the principal gets the information about demographics of the agent (hypothetical name, age group and country of residence) and then asked to judge the performance of the agent. Intervention, thus, is the demographic characteristic of the agent that the principal is paired with and whether the principal is shown the information about the agent or not.
Intervention Start Date
2024-11-14
Intervention End Date
2025-01-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Prior beliefs about agents, posterior beliefs about agents, and wage payment made to the agents (hiring decision).
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We recruit principals and agents for the lab experiment. Agents perform either a male stereotypical or female stereotypical task in two separate sessions.
Principals are then randomly matched with agents (i.e., their performance) and are told the domain of the task performed by the agent . They are also given common demographic information (age and country of residence ) in all the sessions, but those assigned to control arms are not told the gender congruent names but instead about the team that the agent belongs to (team 1 and team 2).

Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer program written in python.
Randomization Unit
This is a 2 (male or female stereotypical task)X3(male agent/female agent/ no information). Participants who are recruited as principals are randomized to see the performance of agents in different rounds where the demographics of agents vary within the participant. Hence, the unit of randomization is a principal-round.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
NA
Sample size: planned number of observations
Up to 2000 principals and up to 400 agents
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Principals are equally divided between male stereotypical, female stereotypical, and control experiments for male and female stereotypical. (hence 500 principals in each treatment arm). Agents are equally divided into male and female stereotypical tasks (200 in each task).
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Stanford IRB
IRB Approval Date
2024-04-08
IRB Approval Number
IRB-44866
Analysis Plan