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Field
Trial Status
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Before
in_development
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After
on_going
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Field
Trial End Date
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Before
November 30, 2022
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After
December 31, 2024
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Field
Last Published
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Before
May 24, 2021 08:54 AM
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After
March 14, 2024 05:57 AM
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Field
Intervention (Public)
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Before
experimental treatments: PARTIAL, SPEC-G, SPEC (details are provided below, see experimental design)
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After
experimental treatments: PARTIAL, SPEC-TYPE, SPEC (details are provided below, see experimental design)
Addendum March, 14, 2024:
Two additional treatments are added: PARTIAL-GENDER and SPEC-GENDER (see details below)
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Field
Intervention End Date
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Before
June 02, 2021
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After
July 31, 2024
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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
We employ a between-subject design with three treatments.
Affirmative action is represented by a quota rule that, depending on subjects' decisions, may or may not be applied to govern the outcome of a tournament. In the tournament, subjects complete a real-effort task that consists of encoding words by substituting the letters of the alphabet with specific numbers given in a table. Subjects participate in the tournament in groups of six. Without the quota rule, the two subjects who encode most words correctly in five minutes are the winners and receive a monetary prize. The remaining four tournament participants are losers and don't receive any monetary payment. Three of the six tournament participants are assigned to the "Green Group" that is disadvantaged since every correctly encoded word is only counted as 0.9 words, while the other three tournament participants are assigned to the "Blue Group" whose performance is not downgraded. Before the start of the tournament subjects decide whether they want to implement a quota rule that ensures that at least one, namely the highest performing, member of the disadvantaged "Green Group" has to be selected as a winner.
One of six subjects' choices is randomly drawn to be implemented. Depending on random treatment assignment, subjects are either i) first assigned to either the disadvantaged or advantaged group, then decide on the quota rule for their own group and participate in the tournament themselves (PARTIAL treatment), ii) first assigned to either the disadvantaged or advantaged group, then decide on the quota rule for a group of tournament participants but only observe the tournament outcome without participating in the tournament themselves (SPEC-G treatment), or iii) are not assigned to any group, decide on the quota rule for a group of tournament participants and only observe the tournament outcome without participating in the tournament themselves (SPEC treatment). A fourth group of subjects acts as tournament participants, for whom subjects in the SPEC-G and SPEC treatment decide on the implementation of the quota rule, but is not of major interest for our research question. Between-subject comparisons between the disadvantaged and standard group as well as between treatments allow us to disentangle impartial preferences for affirmative action policies from other motives, in particular in-group favoritism and self-interest (relating to own chances of winning).
In all three treatments, subjects answer a questionnaire that elicits the following measures: beliefs about chances of winning (with and without the quota rule), in-group favoritism, risk aversion, altruism, socio-demographics, political orientation, prior experienced discrimination, preferences for efficiency, overconfidence, and perceived fairness of the quota rule. These measures serve to analytically show what drives preferences for implementing affirmative action on a within-subject level.
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After
We employ a between-subject design with three treatments.
Affirmative action is represented by a quota rule that, depending on subjects' decisions, may or may not be applied to govern the outcome of a tournament. In the tournament, subjects complete a real-effort task that consists of encoding words by substituting the letters of the alphabet with specific numbers given in a table. Subjects participate in the tournament in groups of six. Without the quota rule, the two subjects who encode most words correctly in five minutes are the winners and receive a monetary prize. The remaining four tournament participants are losers and don't receive any monetary payment. Three of the six tournament participants are assigned to the "Green Group" that is disadvantaged since every correctly encoded word is only counted as 0.9 words, while the other three tournament participants are assigned to the "Blue Group" whose performance is not downgraded. Before the start of the tournament subjects decide whether they want to implement a quota rule that ensures that at least one, namely the highest performing, member of the disadvantaged "Green Group" has to be selected as a winner.
One of six subjects' choices is randomly drawn to be implemented. Depending on random treatment assignment, subjects are either i) first assigned to either the disadvantaged or advantaged group, then decide on the quota rule for their own group and participate in the tournament themselves (PARTIAL treatment), ii) first assigned to either the disadvantaged or advantaged group, then decide on the quota rule for a group of tournament participants but only observe the tournament outcome without participating in the tournament themselves (SPEC-G treatment), or iii) are not assigned to any group, decide on the quota rule for a group of tournament participants and only observe the tournament outcome without participating in the tournament themselves (SPEC treatment). A fourth group of subjects acts as tournament participants, for whom subjects in the SPEC-TYPE and SPEC treatment decide on the implementation of the quota rule, but is not of major interest for our research question. Between-subject comparisons between the disadvantaged and standard group as well as between treatments allow us to disentangle impartial preferences for affirmative action policies from other motives, in particular in-group favoritism and self-interest (relating to own chances of winning).
In all three treatments, subjects answer a questionnaire that elicits the following measures: beliefs about chances of winning (with and without the quota rule), in-group favoritism, risk aversion, altruism, socio-demographics, political orientation, prior experienced discrimination, preferences for efficiency, overconfidence, and perceived fairness of the quota rule. These measures serve to analytically show what drives preferences for implementing affirmative action on a within-subject level.
Addendum March,14, 2024:
While we used a minimal group paradigm (Green and Blue group) before, we add two new treatments (PARTIAL-GENDER and SPEC-GENDER) that use groups that supposedly subjects identify with even more strongly. We conduct the same experiment as before but instead of random assignment to either the disadvantaged or advantaged group, women are always assigned to the disadvantaged and men to the advantaged group and subjects know this.
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Field
Randomization Method
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Before
computerized random assignment (part of the experiment software)
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After
computerized random assignment (part of the experiment software) to treatments
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Field
Planned Number of Observations
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Before
780 decision makers in three treatments (+ 468 observations from 78 additional subjects who participate in six tournaments each)
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After
780 decision makers in three treatments (+ 468 observations from 78 additional subjects who participate in six tournaments each)
Addendum March, 14, 2024:
624 decision makers in two treatments (+ 312 observations from 52 additional subjects who participate in six tournaments each)
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Field
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
PARTIAL treatment: 312 subjects (156 in the disadvantaged, 156 in the advantaged group)
SPEC treatment: 156 subjects (no sub-groups)
SPEC-G treatment: 312 subjects (156 in the disadvantaged, 156 in the advantaged group)
(additional tournament participants for SPEC and SPEC-G: 78 subjects, each participating in 6 tournaments)
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After
PARTIAL treatment: 312 subjects (156 in the disadvantaged, 156 in the advantaged group)
SPEC treatment: 156 subjects (no sub-groups)
SPEC-G treatment: 312 subjects (156 in the disadvantaged, 156 in the advantaged group)
(additional tournament participants for SPEC and SPEC-G: 78 subjects, each participating in 6 tournaments)
Addendum March, 14, 2024:
PARTIAL-GENDER treatment: 312 subjects (156 in the disadvantaged/female, 156 in the advantaged/male group)
SPEC-GENDER treatment: 312 subjects (156 in the disadvantaged/female, 1506 in the advantaged/male group)
(additional tournament participants for SPEC-GENDER: 52 subjects, each participating in 6 tournaments)
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Field
Building on Existing Work
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Before
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After
No
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