Roy, Eliane, Jaeger, Bastian, Evans, Anthony M et al. (61 more authors) (2024) A contest study to reduce attractiveness-based discrimination in social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. ISSN 0022-3514
Abstract
Discrimination in the evaluation of others is a key cause of social inequality around the world. However, relatively little is known about psychological interventions that can be used to prevent biased evaluations. The limited evidence that exists on these strategies is spread across many methods and populations, making it difficult to generate reliable best practices that can be effective across contexts. In the present work, we held a research contest to solicit interventions with the goal of reducing discrimination based on physical attractiveness using a hypothetical admissions task. Thirty interventions were tested across four rounds of data collection (total N > 20,000). Using a signal detection theory approach to evaluate interventions, we identified two interventions that reduced discrimination by lessening both decision noise and decision bias, while two other interventions reduced overall discrimination by only lessening noise or bias. The most effective interventions largely provided concrete strategies that directed participants' attention toward decision-relevant criteria and away from socially biasing information, though the fact that very similar interventions produced differing effects on discrimination suggests certain key characteristics that are needed for manipulations to reliably impact judgment. The effects of these four interventions on decision bias, noise, or both also replicated in a different discrimination domain, political affiliation, and generalized to populations with self-reported hiring experience. Results of the contest for decreasing attractiveness-based favoritism suggest that identifying effective routes for changing discriminatory behavior is a challenge and that greater investment is needed to develop impactful, flexible, and scalable strategies for reducing discrimination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the University’s Research Publications and Open Access policy. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Psychology (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2024 16:40 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jan 2025 00:12 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000414 |
Status: | Published online |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1037/pspa0000414 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219811 |
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