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The Impacts of Soft Affirmative Action: Experimental Evidence

Last registered on October 22, 2021

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Could affirmative action backfire?
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0007383
Initial registration date
March 18, 2021

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
March 22, 2021, 1:17 PM EDT

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

Last updated
October 22, 2021, 1:03 AM EDT

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

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Queensland University of Technology

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Queensland University of Technology

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2021-11-01
End date
2024-01-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
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.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Hu, Hairong and Gregory Kubitz. 2021. "Could affirmative action backfire?." AEA RCT Registry. October 22. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.7383-2.1
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
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.


Intervention Start Date
2021-12-01
Intervention End Date
2024-01-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1) Outcome 1: Large unfairness impact - hired less but estimated same
2) Outcome 2: Small unfairness impact - hired more or indifferent but estimated less
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
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.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
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)
Experimental Design Details
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:

- 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.

Randomization Method
Randomisation was done by a computer through O-tree
Randomization Unit
Individual participant
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
100 individual participants per each treatments (500 in total)
Sample size: planned number of observations
500 observations
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
100 individual participants per each treatments (500 in total)
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

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