Stereotypes in High-Stakes Decisions: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts

Last registered on December 23, 2020
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Stereotypes in High-Stakes Decisions: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0005149
Initial registration date
December 09, 2019

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 09, 2019, 2:13 PM EST

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

Last updated
December 23, 2020, 1:08 PM EST

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

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Arianna Ornaghi
Affiliation
University of Warwick
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Daniel Chen
PI Affiliation
Toulouse School of Economics
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Elliott Ash
PI Affiliation
ETH Zürich
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2021-02-01
End date
2022-01-01
Keywords
Gender
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Attitudes towards social groups such as women and racial minorities are important determinants of decision-making, but they are difficult to measure for individuals in policy-making roles. We propose to address this challenge by studying U.S. appellate court judges, for whom we have large corpora of written text (their published opinions). Using published opinions, we construct a judge-specific measure of gender-stereotyped language (gender slant) by looking at the linguistic association of words identifying gender (male versus female) and words identifying gender stereotypes (career versus family). To improve our understanding of how lexical slant can be interpreted, we plan to conduct an online survey experiment aimed at eliciting gender preferences from judges with the objective of correlating them with our measure of lexical slant.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ash, Elliott, Daniel Chen and Arianna Ornaghi. 2020. "Stereotypes in High-Stakes Decisions: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts." AEA RCT Registry. December 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.5149-1.1
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Intervention Start Date
2021-02-01
Intervention End Date
2021-07-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Response rates; gender preferences.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We will randomize the salience of the name of the email account and researcher name (and gender) from which the survey invitation is addressed. We will randomize across the names of the author as well as whether the first name or first initial is used.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization will be done in an office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
We place to contact around 6,000 judges.
Sample size: planned number of observations
We place to contact around 6,000 judges.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
The judges will be equally split across treatment arms.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Commission ETH Zurich
IRB Approval Date
2019-11-15
IRB Approval Number
EK 2019-N-55
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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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