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Abstract
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Before
Affirmative action policy (AA policy) is effective to increase the representation of the minorities, and therefore reduce ethnic discrimination during the hiring process, without damaging the firm’s performance (Beaurain & Masclet, 2016; Dianat, Echenique, & Yariv, 2018; Niederle, Segal, & Vesterlund, 2013). However, many recent studies argue that AA policy may have distortion on the perceived preferences and productivity belief of the employers against the affirmed group in the long-term, which may generate additional discrimination against them in the workplace where AA policy has been lifted (Gürtler & Gürtler, 2019; Maggian, Montinari, & Nicolò, 2020; Petters & Schroeder, 2020). In this study, we aim to identify whether AA policy in recruitment has negative spillover effects on ethnic discrimination against the affirmed group, and what is the nature of the greater discrimination in the further stages of employment.
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After
The aim of affirmative action (AA) policies is to increase the representation of minorities in candidate pools for hiring and/or promotions. In this study, we plan to use the controlled setting of a lab experiment to find evidence and understand the true size and nature of the spillover effects of a soft AA policy on employer discrimination. It allows us to determine 1) whether this effect is predominately positive or negative, and 2) whether it is primarily driven by behavioural preferences (taste-based discrimination) or rational choice (statistical discrimination). We do this by separating hiring decisions from output estimation decisions, and by comparing AA policies for an ethnic minority group with for a random “priority” group that has no distinct characteristics. Our findings aim to provide evidence and insights into the mechanisms of spillover effects of soft AA policies in the labour market.
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Trial Start Date
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Before
June 30, 2021
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November 01, 2021
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Trial End Date
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October 31, 2021
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January 31, 2024
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Last Published
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March 22, 2021 01:17 PM
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October 18, 2021 02:22 AM
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Intervention (Public)
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Baseline: No affirmative action for the minority group during the hiring process.
Treatment (Intervention): There is a quota for minority candidate during the hiring process
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After
Baseline: No affirmative action for the minority group in selecting the candidate pool.
Baseline – Type (2): No affirmative action for the minority group in selecting the candidate pool. No ethnic type informed.
Treatment (Intervention): There is a soft AA for minority in selecting the candidate pool. Ethnic type informed.
Soft AA – Lucky (4): There is a soft AA for a random group (to have priority) in selecting the candidate pool. No ethnic type informed but the priority status will be informed.
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Intervention Start Date
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Before
June 30, 2021
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December 01, 2021
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Intervention End Date
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Before
October 31, 2021
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January 01, 2024
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Primary Outcomes (End Points)
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Before
1) the probability of being selected by a majority/minority employer, controlled by the share of a minority among the pool of the candidate
2) the mean differences in estimated results between the majority candidates and the minority
candidates.
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After
1) Outcome 1: Large unfairness impact - hired less but estimated same
2) Outcome 2: Small unfairness impact - hired more or indifferent but estimated less
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Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
1) The interaction term: minority x relative adjusted scores (majority-minority) may have a negative relationship with 1) the probability of a minority to be selected, and positive relationship with 2) the differences in estimated scores between the majority and minority candidate.
2) a) AA treatment (NIC): We detect statistical discrimination if the mean differences in estimation (majority candidate – minority candidate) is positive and significant
3) we detect taste-based discrimination if the differences in estimation (majority candidate – minority candidate) are greater for the majority employers
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1) Expected outcome 1: Behaviour story (Large unfairness impact (Petters & Schröder, 2020) – hired less but estimated same)
(a) In the hiring decision: The negative spillover effect is much larger in the soft AA policy – minority treatment (3) than in the soft AA policy – lucky treatment (4). Because employers belong to the unaffirmed group in treatment (3) but not in treatment (4), which are expected to generate extra bias for employers.
(b) In the output predictions: Expect no different in soft AA policy – minority treatment (3) and in the soft AA policy – lucky treatment (4)
because the feelings of unfairness are expected not to affect employers’ belief in productivity.
2) Expected outcome 2: Rational story (Small unfairness impact – hired more or indifferent but estimated less – consistent with the empirical case – “Rooney Rule” in National Football league (DuBois, 2015; Fershtman & Pavan, 2020))
(a) In the hiring decision: Exposure and frequency effects (positive spillover) dominate the signal effects (negative spillover) because signal
effects mainly weaken the positive signals of the affirmed group, resulting in a negative impact on belief rather than hiring.
(b) In the output prediction: Signal effects (negative spillover) dominate the exposure and frequency effects (positive spillover) because
signal effects mainly weaken the positive signals of the affirmed group, resulting in a negative impact on belief rather than hiring.
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Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
The experiment consists of 3 parts. The first one is the preliminary phase to capture the demographic information of all the participants. All the participants will finish a questionnaire to continue the experiment, we elicit the information to classify in-group and out-group participants and capture their personal characteristics. In part 2, participants will engage in a 4-letter word anagram task and a risk attitude task. The second part is a hiring game that includes 3 stages with 2 tasks. One player from the majority group and one player from the minority group will play the role of the employer while the rest will play the role of potential employees. The first stage is the interview task where the intervention of affirmative action policy will be introduced and determine 4 potential employees to enter the next stage where the intervention treatment will be introduced. The second stage is the hiring game where employers will choose 2 candidates to form a group and finish an output task. The thrid stage is the estimation task where employers will estimate the performance of their selected candidates based on the group scores in the output task.
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After
In this experiment, we have two phases: 1) preliminary phase, in which we aim to recruit 100 participants to complete a series of tasks. 2) The secondary phase, in which we aim to recruit 100 participants for every four treatments to complete a hiring game with a hiring decision and 4 estimating decisions.
The preliminary phase is designed to generate actual profiles of candidates for use in the second phase of the hiring game. The benefit of using actual profiles is to introduce actual costs for discriminatory behaviour and therefore capture the actual level of employer discrimination (Hedegaard & Tyran, 2018). During this phase, we are going to ask participants to finish an individual experiment, including five individual tasks with 2 minutes each. The individual task is a 4-letter word anagram that participants need to correctly rearrange as many as possible sets of 4 letters to a meaningful word in 2 minutes. At the end of this phase, we will ask participants to finish an exit survey to capture their individual demographic differences. With five 4-letter anagram tasks, we were able to measure each individual's productivity and generate the inputs for the second phase of the hiring game.
The second phase is a hiring game, in which we will introduce four different treatments, a soft AA policy for an ethnic minority group, a soft AA policy for a randomly selected group, and baselines both with and without information about ethnicity. In the second part of a hiring game, we will only recruit the majority as our participants. The majority are those who self-reported as White, currently live in the U.S., are born in the U.S., use English as their first native language. And all the participants for this experiment need to make two decisions: 1) hiring decision 2) estimation decision.
Prior to making a hiring decision, all profiles will go through a “pre-screen process" in which the computer will randomly select one of the five tasks completed by the individuals of profiles during the preliminary phase and rank all 12 profiles. Only 4 profiles will be selected as candidates during the hiring decision. During the hiring decision, participants will receive the profiles of four candidates, including scores of another drawn task (different from task used in “pre-screen process"), and age. Whether the ethnicity type of each candidate is included in the profiles, and the way for selecting 4 candidates' profiles are different treatments by treatments. We have 4 different treatments.
The preliminary phase is designed to generate actual profiles of candidates for use in the second phase of the hiring game. The benefit of using actual profiles is to introduce actual costs for discriminatory behaviour and therefore capture the actual level of employer discrimination (Hedegaard & Tyran, 2018).
The second phase is a hiring game, in which we will introduce four different treatments, a soft AA policy for an ethnic minority group, a soft AA policy for a randomly selected group, and baselines both with and without information about ethnicity.
Prior to making a hiring decision, all profiles will go through a “pre-screen process" in which the computer will randomly select one of the five tasks completed by the individuals of profiles during the preliminary phase and rank all 12 profiles. Only 4 profiles will be selected as candidates during the hiring decision.
The pre-screen process and the given information in the profiles vary treatments by treatments (see interventions)
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Planned Number of Clusters
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300-500 individual participants
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100 individual participants per each treatments (500 in total)
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Planned Number of Observations
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300-500 observations
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500 observations
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Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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300-500 individual participants
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100 individual participants per each treatments (500 in total)
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Keyword(s)
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Firms And Productivity, Labor
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Behavior, Firms And Productivity, Lab, Labor
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Intervention (Hidden)
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Before
Baseline: No AA applied in the pool of candidates in stage 1 of the hiring game
Treatment: AA policy applied and at least 2 minorities in the pool of candidates in part 2.
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- Baseline (1): The profiles of the top 4 best performers will enter the candidate pool for all participants to choose from. During the selection,
the ethnic type will not be explicitly informed.
- Baseline – Type (2): The profiles of the top 4 best performers will enter the candidate pool for all participants to choose from. During the
selection, the ethnic type will be explicitly informed.
- Soft AA – Type (3): The profiles of the top 2 best-performing minorities and the top 2 best-performing non-selected remainders will enter the candidate pool. During the selection, the ethnic type will be explicitly informed.
- Soft AA – Lucky (4): Half of the profiles will be assigned as “lucky", and half will be assigned as “unlucky". The profile of the top 2 best performing individuals from the “lucky" group and the top 2 best-performing non-selected remainders will enter the candidate pool. During the selection, the ethnic type will not be explicitly informed.
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Building on Existing Work
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No
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