Publications

March 2021
Supplement

Applied: Using Behavioral Science to Debias Hiring (B)

By: Ashley Whillans and Jeff Polzer

At the end of 2018, Applied faced questions of stakeholder management and scale. Glazebrook wanted clients to get rid of CVs altogether. To do this, they would have to help hiring managers and recruiters easily build task-based assessments of the skills that their... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Bias; Behavioral Science; Selection and Staffing; Prejudice and Bias; Information Technology; Competency and Skills

06 Mar 2019
Sharpening Your Skills

Has the Glass Ceiling Been Broken (or at Least Cracked)?

On Friday, we will celebrate International Women's Day 2019, an annual event to promote the advancement of gender equality and gauge our progress across many domains. In business, researchers tell us, progress is happening but is still slow. There are more women on... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

2023
Working Paper

Insufficiently Justified Disparate Impact: A New Criterion for Subgroup Fairness

By: Neil Menghani, Edward McFowland III and Daniel B. Neill

In this paper, we develop a new criterion, "insufficiently justified disparate impact" (IJDI), for assessing whether recommendations (binarized predictions) made by an algorithmic decision support tool are fair. Our novel, utility-based IJDI criterion evaluates false... View Details

Keywords: AI and Machine Learning; Forecasting and Prediction; Prejudice and Bias

September 2020
Article

Community-Level Postmaterialism and Anti-Migrant Attitudes:: An Original Survey on Opposition to Sub-Saharan African Migrants in the Middle East

By: Matt Buehler, Kristin Fabbe and Kyung Joon Han

Why do native citizens of the Middle East and North Africa express greater opposition to certain types of migrants, refugees, and displaced persons? Why, particularly, do they express greater opposition to sub-Saharan African migrants? This article investigates these... View Details

Keywords: Postmaterialism; Immigration; Attitudes; Prejudice and Bias; Surveys; Africa; Middle East

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April 2010
Supplement

Howard Roizen

By: Kathleen L. McGinn and Nicole Tempest

Howard Roizen, a venture capitalist at SOFTBANK Venture Capital and a former entrepreneur, maintains an extensive personal and professional network. He leverages this network to benefit both himself and others. The case considers the steps he's taken to build and... View Details

Keywords: Networks; Prejudice and Bias; Venture Capital; Fairness; Entrepreneurship; Gender

April 2017
Article

Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment

By: Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca and Daniel Svirsky

In an experiment on Airbnb, we find that applications from guests with distinctively African-American names are 16% less likely to be accepted relative to identical guests with distinctively White names. Discrimination occurs among landlords of all sizes, including... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Field Experiment; Bias; Airbnb; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Accommodations Industry

2003
Article

Don't Blame the Computer: When Self-Disclosure Moderates the Self-Serving Bias

By: Youngme Moon

Keywords: Information Technology; Prejudice and Bias

November–December 2024
Article

High-Status Teammates: Award Evaluation in the National Basketball Association

By: Dominika Kinga Randle and Letian Zhang

Social evaluations proceed in stages. First, judges filter a broad pool of candidates and pick a subset for detailed assessment. Then, the chosen group undergoes a closer examination, during which winners are selected. At both stages of the process, judges are... View Details

Keywords: Performance Evaluation; Prejudice and Bias; Groups and Teams; Status and Position; Sports Industry

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March 2021 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Applied: Using Behavioral Science to Debias Hiring

By: Ashley Whillans and Jeff Polzer

The UK government’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) needed to hire a new associate and were trying to increase the diversity of their job candidates. This decision was based on academic research showing that recruiters and managers often fell into common traps like... View Details

Keywords: Hiring; Bias; Behavioral Science; Selection and Staffing; Diversity; Prejudice and Bias; Information Technology; Recruitment

Educators

Forthcoming
Chapter

Cognitive Barriers to Environmental Action: Problems and Solutions

By: Lisa L. Shu and Max Bazerman

Keywords: Cognition and Thinking; Prejudice and Bias; Environmental Sustainability

June 18, 2022
Article

In Defense of Online Anonymity

By: Michael Luca

Lack of transparency on the internet may help fuel toxic dialogue, but it also encourages honest feedback and protects people against discrimination View Details

Keywords: Transparency; Anonymity; Honesty; Social Media; Prejudice and Bias

November 2022
Technical Note

Leader Action Orientations

By: Ryan Raffaelli, Akshaya Varghese and Laura Weimer

Leaders are responsible for planning and executing actions that advance organizational goals. As individuals gain career experience, they tend to develop and rely on implicit mental models that shape how they go about “getting things done.” Without knowing it, most... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Development; Prejudice and Bias; Cognition and Thinking; Decision Making; Behavior

Educators

May 28, 2018
Article

How Companies Can Identify Racial and Gender Bias in Their Customer Service

By: Alexandra C. Feldberg and Tami Kim

Research shows that minority customers — blacks and Asians — regularly receive worse customer service than whites in ways that are not immediately obvious to onlookers (or even managers). These results prompt a couple of questions for executives and managers. One, does... View Details

Keywords: Internal Audit; Customers; Service Delivery; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Gender; Organizational Change and Adaptation

20 Jul 2020
Working Paper Summaries

The Pursuit of Passion Propagates Privilege

Keywords: by Josephine Tan and Jon M. Jachimowicz

18 Jun 2012
Research & Ideas

Better by the Bunch: Evaluating Job Candidates in Groups

New research suggests that organizations wishing to avoid gender stereotyping in the hiring or promotion process-and employ the most productive person instead—should evaluate job candidates as a group, rather than one at a time. “The three of us have produced one of... View Details

Keywords: by Maggie Starvish

February 1990 (Revised March 1990)
Case

Quantum Semiconductor, Inc.

By: Janice H. Hammond and Roy D. Shapiro

Quantum is faced with a difficult ethical dilemma--industry studies provide evidence that chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing may cause women working in fabrication cleanrooms to suffer a higher likelihood of spontaneous abortions. The possibility of other... View Details

Keywords: Safety; Prejudice and Bias; Law; Equality and Inequality; Cost; Production; Ethics; Health; Gender; Semiconductor Industry

2020
Working Paper

(When) Does Appearance Matter? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Christos A. Makridis and Subhradip Sarker

While there is evidence about labor market discrimination based on race, religion, and gender, we know little about whether physical appearance leads to discrimination in labor market outcomes. We deploy a randomized experiment on 1,000 respondents in India between... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Coronavirus; Discrimination; Homophily; Labor Market Mobility; Limited Attention; Resumes; Personal Characteristics; Prejudice and Bias