AEA RC T Registr y

The American Economic Association's registry for randomized controlled trials

Employers are shown information about two candidates (one female and one male) and asked to indicate which candidate they want to hire to come up with an advertisement slogan individually. The information includes the candidate’s fictional name, education level, work experience, and the slogan they produced (either individually or in a team). The gender of the candidate, and, in case of a team work evaluation, their co-worker's gender, is conveyed through virtual names and an avatar showing a silhouette of a man or a woman. Education is measured in three categories: “High School or less”, “Some College education”, and “College degree or more”. Experience is also measured in three categories: “Up to 1 year”, “1 to 3 years” and “3 years or more”. We tell the participants that we do not use workers’ real name.

We randomize:

1. Whether the slogan is produced individually or in a team. (Individual vs. Team treatment)

2. The gender of the co-workers of the candidates in the “Team work” treatment. In particular, we vary whether the employer chooses between (i) a male candidate with a female co-worker and a female candidate with a male co-worker, (ii) a male candidate with a male co-worker and a female candidate with a female co-worker, (iii) a male candidate with a male co-worker and a female candidate with a male co worker, and (iv) a male candidate with a female co-worker and a female candidate with a female co-worker.

3. Which information/instructions the employer observes (a “Baseline”-, a “Hidden gender”-, and a “Cognition” treatment). In the “Hidden gender” treatment, all information about the gender of the candidates (and, under the “Team work” treatment, their co-workers) is removed from the resume. In the “Cognition” treatment, before making their hiring decision participants are forced to reflect on the productivity weight they give to the candidate they hire and as well as their co-worker.

4. Whether the products are stereotypically male or stereotypically female.

To reduce the total number of treatments, and increase statistical power, the ``Hidden gender''- and ``Cognition'' treatments are only implemented under the ``Team work'' treatment for stereotypically male products. Further, all four combinations of candidate/co-worker gender are only implemented under the ``Baseline'' treatment for stereotypically male products.

2020-06-22

2020-08-22

Employers' hiring decision of candidates.

All primary outcomes can be observed directly from the data.

No secondary outcomes considered at this time.

No secondary outcomes considered at this time.

We conduct an experiment structured in three stages, a Work stage, an Evaluation stage and an Employer stage. For the first stage, we use Amazon's Mechanical Turk to recruit participants. The other stages are conducted in collaboration with the Gallup Panel, a representative sample of U.S. adults. The stages contain the following procedures:

Work stage - Task 1: Workers work individually and propose a slogan for an advertising campaign for a product.

Work stage - Task 2: Workers work individually or in teams (depending on treatment) and propose a slogan for an advertising campaign for a different product.

Evaluation stage: Evaluators evaluate the quality of the slogans proposed during Task 1 and Task 2 of the Work stage.

Payment of workers: Workers from the Work stage are paid according to the evaluations received by their proposed slogans in the Evaluation stage.

Employment stage - Hiring decision: Employers choose whom to hire from a set of two candidates, observing the slogan produced during Task 2 of the Work stage.

Payment of employers: Employers are paid according to the evaluations (from the Evaluation stage) of the slogan proposed during Task 1 by the person they hire.

Survey: Participants reveal whether they have experienced any negative labor market shocks during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Disclaimer: We will submit the pre-analysis plan in the next version of the trial registry and before we receive data from the survey provider.

Not available

Pseudorandom number generator managed by Gallup.

All randomization happens at the individual level.

No

We sample units at the individual level.

In total we target 4,450 employers.

• 400 per product pair for individual work
• 400 per product pair for mixed teams
• 125 per male stereotypical product pair for mixed- vs same-gender teams
• 125 per male stereotypical product pair for same-gender vs same-gender teams
• 125 per male stereotypical product pair to be used in the hidden gender policy treatment
• 125 per male stereotypical product pair to be used in the cognition policy treatment

ANALYSIS PLAN