The Impacts of Soft Affirmative Action: Experimental Evidence

1) Baseline: No affirmative action for the minority group in selecting the candidate pool.
2) Baseline – Type (2): No affirmative action for the minority group in selecting the candidate pool. No ethnic type informed.
3) Treatment (Intervention) - AA policy - minority (3): There is a soft AA for minorities in selecting the candidate pool. Ethnic type informed.
4) Controlled- AA policy – 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.

2021-12-01

2024-01-01

Hiring decisions: 1) percentage % of minorities candidates being hired 2) probability of a minority candidate being hired, controlled by ethic type, scores(rank), age(different from the employer's age). We compare these two outcome variables in different treatments.

Estimation decisions: 1) mean estimated scores for majority candidates and minorities candidates in different treatments 2) Multiplier, measured by (estimated scores - given scores) -1. We will compare the average value of the multiplier among the majorities candidates and minorities candidates. 3) Linear regression on estimated scores_it (i for an individual candidate, t for the session) = a0+a1*minority_it +b1*scores_it +b2*scores_it*minority_it+b3*age+eit. b2 capture the ethnic difference in the impact of given scores on estimated scores (signal effects). Therefore, we can capture the signal effects via b2. If b2 is negative and different 0 under AA policy minority (3) and AA policy lucky(4), the signal effect is significant, and the positive productivity signals of a minority/affirmed candidate are less effective than that of a majority/unaffirmed candidate.

We plan to detect four effects through the outcome variables in Soft AA minority(3) vs. Baseline Type(2). (see primary outcomes).
1) Hiring decisions:
1) (positive) Frequency effects: The introduction of AA policy for minorities will increase the proportion of minority candidates in the pool (>=50%). This is likely to increase the likelihood of a minority to be hired, including the percentage % of minorities candidates is higher than % of majorities candidates, and the probability of a minority candidate being hired is greater than a majority candidate under soft AA minority(3).
2) (positive) Overcoming effects: Through comparing Baseline(1) and Baseline Type (2) in hiring decisions, we can know whether majority employers hold a natural bias against minority employees during hiring decisions. If the natural bias exists, the introduction of AA policy for minorities can help employers have greater exposure to minorities, and understand there is no ability difference between majorities and minorities candidates. This is likely to decrease the likelihood of a minority to be hired, including the percentage % of minorities candidates is lower than % of majorities candidates, and the probability of a minority candidate being hired is smaller than a majority candidate under soft AA minority(3).
3) (negative) Unfairness effects: The introduction of AA policies may be accompanied by a perceived procedural unfairness to the affirmed group and give employers a greater preference for the unaffirmed group. This is likely to decrease the likelihood of a minority to be hired, including the percentage % of minorities candidates is lower than % of majorities candidates, and the probability of a minority candidate being hired is smaller than a majority candidate under soft AA minority(3).


2) Estimation decisions:
1) (positive) Exposure effects: The exposure effects are likely to eliminate the differences in conditional predicted outcomes between majority candidates and minorities candidates. We expect to see there are no differences in mean estimated scores in the Soft AA minority (3), but there are positive differences in the Baseline type (2).
2) (negative) Signal effects: The introduction of a soft AA policy would weaken the positive productivity signals of the affirmed group because some candidates from the affirmed group would not pass the pre-screen process without the soft AA policy. This will cause employers to estimate lower scores for the affirmed candidates than the unaffirmed candidates. We expect to see 1) mean estimates scores of minorities < mean estimated scores of majorities under the Soft AA minority(3); 2) In Soft AA minority (3) & Soft AA lucky (4), the mean multiplier for minority/affirmed group < 0 < the mean multiplier for majority/unaffirmed. The absolute value of the minority/affirmed group's multiplier should be greater than the majority/unaffirmed group's multiplier. This indicates that employers will estimate lower scores with greater deviation on affirmed group's performance; 3) b2 is significantly different from 0, and it is a negative number under Soft AA minority (3) & Soft AA lucky (4). This implies that the positive productivity signals of a minority/an affirmed candidate are less effective than that of a majority/an unaffirmed candidate after the introduction of a soft AA policy.

1) Hypothesis 1: Behaviour story (Large unfairness impact – hired less but estimated same).
- In the hiring decision: The negative spillover effect is much larger in the soft AA policy minority(3) than in the soft AA policy lucky(4).
- In the estimation decision: Expect no difference in soft AA policy minority(3) and in the soft AA policy lucky(4).

2) Hypothesis 2: Rational story (Small unfairness impact – hired more or indifferent but estimated less) within Soft AA minority(3).
- In the hiring decision: Exposure and frequency effects (positive spillover) dominate the signal effects (negative spillover), if unfairness is stronger with the out-group than with a random group.
- In the estimation decision: Signal effects (negative spillover) dominate the exposure effects (positive spillover).

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 treatment (see interventions).

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 for 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.

Randomisation was done by a computer through O-Tree

Individual participant

No

100 individual participants per treatment (500 in total, 400 for the main experiment)

12 profiles per session. 100 sessions per treatment. Total observations are 12*100*4 = 4800.

100 sessions per treatment (total are 400 sessions)