Hiring Bias Research Articles

Developing the Research Basis for Controlling Bias in Hiring

Discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, age, disability, gender orientation, and other characteristics continues to distort employers’ hiring decisions and thereby limit employment opportunities for historically excluded groups. Research in psychology, sociology, economics, and management provides insights concerning the mechanisms of bias and interventions to mitigate their effects, but important questions remain. The innovative research technique of matched pair testing offers laboratory‐like controlled conditions in quasi‐experiments in real‐world hiring situations. We propose seven types of testing studies to advance conceptual understanding of hiring bias and improve hiring practices.

Interventions That Affect Gender Bias in Hiring: A Systematic Review

To systematically review experimental evidence for interventions mitigating gender bias in employment. Unconscious endorsement of gender stereotypes can undermine academic medicine's commitment to gender equity. The authors performed electronic and hand searches for randomized controlled studies since 1973 of interventions that affect gender differences in evaluation of job applicants. Twenty-seven studies met all inclusion criteria. Interventions fell into three categories: application information, applicant features, and rating conditions. The studies identified gender bias as the difference in ratings or perceptions of men and women with identical qualifications. Studies reaffirmed negative bias against women being evaluated for positions traditionally or predominantly held by men (male sex-typed jobs). The assessments of male and female raters rarely differed. Interventions that provided raters with clear evidence of job-relevant competencies were effective. However, clearly competent women were rated lower than equivalent men for male sex-typed jobs unless evidence of communal qualities was also provided. A commitment to the value of credentials before review of applicants and women's presence at above 25% of the applicant pool eliminated bias against women. Two studies found unconscious resistance to "antibias" training, which could be overcome with distraction or an intervening task. Explicit employment equity policies and an attractive appearance benefited men more than women, whereas repeated employment gaps were more detrimental to men. Masculine-scented perfume favored the hiring of both sexes. Negative bias occurred against women who expressed anger or who were perceived as self-promoting. High-level evidence exists for strategies to mitigate gender bias in hiring.

Report Finds No Gender Bias in Faculty Hiring, Resources

A new report by the U.S. National Academies says that women are getting a fair shake from major research universities in being hired, promoted, and given access to resources—once they can grab onto the academic ladder and start climbing the rungs.

They Helped Modernize Turkey’s Medical Education and Practice: Refugees from Nazism 1933–1945

This paper discusses a dimly lit and largely unknown bit of 20th century history. Starting in 1933,Turkey reformed its medical health care system using invitees fleeing the Nazis and for whom America was out of reach because of restrictive immigration laws and wide-spread anti-Semitic hiring bias at its universities. Among the invitees were several medical scholars who played a large role in westernizing the new Turkish republic's medical practice and research as well as its school curricula.

Transfer of Western Knowledge to Turkey: Institutionalized Policy of Translation and Library Building

In 1932 the Turkish Government decided to westernize the country's higher education and library systems. But there was a substantial shortage of human resources to undertake the task. Having been informed of the flight of professional intellectuals from Nazi persecution in Germany for whom America was out of reach because of its restrictive immigration laws, state department practices, and anti-Semitic hiring bias at its universities, Turkey in 1933 invited over 190 of them to be part of its modernization efforts. Among the invitees was a team of philologists, expert librarians, archivists and bookbinders. These conservators of knowledge, gathered over generations, were ready and willing to oblige. To them this was the gift of life. They contributed greatly to the organization of a modern European system of libraries and document archives in Turkey. In addition, a monumental program was set up to translate the major works of classical (Greek and Roman) and general European literature into the Turkish language.

Glass Ceilings, Sticky Floors or Sticky Doors? A Quantile Regression Approach to Exploring Gender Wage Gaps in Sri Lanka

Recently developed counterfactual techniques that combine quantile regression with a bootstrap approach allow for the interpretation of lower quantiles of the simulated unconditional wage as if they related to poor people. We use this approach to analyse gender wage gaps across the wage distribution in Sri Lanka using quarterly labour force data from 1996 to 2004. Male and female wages are equal at the overall mean, but differ greatly between public and private sectors and across the wage distribution. We find that differences in the way identical men and women are rewarded in the labour market more than account for the difference in wages throughout the distribution. We find evidence of wider wage gaps at the bottom of the distribution in both sectors (indicative of sticky floors), but little evidence of larger gaps at the top of the distribution (glass ceiligs). Conditional wage gaps increase when controls for occupation, industry and part-time employment status are included, consistent with females selecting into occupations that better reward their characteristics. Policies that address gender bias in wage setting - especially in the low and unskilled occupations - are indicated, while policies that address gender bias in hiring and in workplace practices are likely to be more appropriate than policies that seek to improve womens' productivity-enhancing characteristics in reducing the gender wage gap.

The Effect of Context on the Silver Ceiling: A Role Congruity Perspective on Prejudiced Responses

Three studies examined role incongruity as a source of age bias in hiring decisions. Building on previous research demonstrating contextual variation in prejudice, the authors predicted that prejudiced responses emerge particularly in contexts where group stereotypes misalign with the requirements of social roles. Findings indicate that (a) older workers are particularly penalized in occupational contexts that are quickly changing, (b) older workers are perceived as less adaptable than younger workers, and (c) the tendency to prefer younger than older workers more for a dynamic than a stable company is mediated by perceptions of adaptability. Finally, adaptability perceptions better predicted hiring bias than did global evaluations of older people and levels of contact with older people. These experiments provide initial evidence that perceived fit to roles is a determinant of contextual variation in prejudiced responses.

The German-Speaking Diaspora in Turkey: Exiles From Nazism as Architects of Modern Turkish Education (1933–1945)

This article discusses a little-known aspect of higher education history. The Republic of Turkey was established in 1923. The system of higher education Turkey inherited from the Ottomans totaled some 300+ Islamic madrasas, one of which was converted into a fledgling university at the turn of the century; and three military academies, one of which was expanded into a civil engineering school around 1909. Starting in 1933, Turkey reformed its higher education using invitees fleeing the Nazis, for whom America was out of reach because of restrictive immigration laws and wide-spread anti-Semitic hiring bias at its universities. Almost overnight, the University of Istanbul was referred to as the best German university in the world. Historians of higher education might have difficulty matching so significant a qualitative transformation implemented at the national level in so short a timeframe. One country's great loss was another country's gain, and a third country's benefits delayed.

Turkey's Invitations to Nazi Persecuted Intellectuals Circa 1933: A Bibiliographic Essay on History's Blind Spot

In 1933, Turkey set out on a crash process of reforming its legal and health care delivery systems as well as its system of higher education using refugees fleeing the Nazis. By way of formal government invitations these people were given a safe haven. For many America was out of reach because of restrictive immigration laws and wide spread anti-Semitic hiring bias at its universities. As other opportunities availed themselves most of these eminent intellectuals came West and helped catapult America's academe to still greater heights. This paper documents the fact that Anglophone historians are still unaware of this significant chapter of 20th Century history and discusses that episode, its legacy turned epoch, and perceptions thereof in Turkey today.

Migration and Transfer of Knowledge: Refugees from Nazism and Turkish Legal Reform

Starting in 1933, Turkey reformed its judicial system as well as its system of higher education using refugees fleeing the Nazis and given a safe haven through formal government invitations. For these souls America was out of reach because of restrictive immigration laws and wide spread anti-Semitic hiring bias at its universities. Among the invited were several German legal scholars and economists who played a large role to further westernize the new Turkish Republic's legal code and tax legislation. This paper will discuss that epoch, its legacy, and perceptions thereof in Turkey today

Weight Bias: Nature, Consequences, and Remedies

K.D. BROWNELL, R.M. PUHL, M.B. SCHWARTZ, L. RUDD, (eds): Weight Bias: Nature, Consequences, and Guilford Press: New York. 2005, 320 pp., $35.00, ISBN 1593851995 Weight Bias focuses on what the authors suggest is the last accepted arena of discrimination, obesity. field of obesity research has come a long way since Theodore B. Van Itallie produced his original research on metabolism and Albert Stunkard's oriented the profession, as well as the public, to the unspoken emotional pain of the obese in the Pain of Obesity. These historic giants in the field laid the groundwork for the present-day centers of excellence in the field of obesity research. With Weight Bias, Brownell et al have taken on the enormous challenge of producing a substantial work on the stigma and bias surrounding obesity. book successfully demonstrates that although overweight and obesity are linked to a long list of diseases, what is generally not recognized is the extent to which stigma, bias, and discrimination affect the health of obese individuals. This is an important book. It's wide scope, which provides a history of the field of obesity research from the 1960s to the present, may be its weakness as well as its strength. That being said, it is a thought-provoking work, which will inform the public as well as anyone working in this field. twenty-two chapters in the book are divided into four Parts: The Nature and Extent of Weight Bias; Origins, Explanations and Measurements; Consequences of Weight Bias; and Remedies. Part I demonstrates the prevalence of weight bias in employment, health care settings, the media, and among children and teens. Janna Fikkan and Esther Rothblum supply ample evidence of weight bias in hiring, pay equity, and other work-related areas, and the book provides an extensive examination of the legal ramifications of making excess fat a legal disability. In a discussion of health care workers in health care settings, Anthony Fabricatore, Thomas Wadden, and Gary Foster describe the inadvertent, insidious collaboration between patient and physician surrounding weight loss issues, which occurs in the transference and countertransference of the relationship. suggested scenario goes something like this: A patient is told to lose weight. When the patient does not follow through, the health care provider becomes less invested in the patient, who in turn becomes discouraged. Fabricatore & Wadden emphasize that it is inappropriate and inaccurate to assume that obese individuals must also have some form of psychopathology, raising the age-old question: Is obesity a psychosomatic illness? They argue that top experts in the obesity field deem genetic, rather than psychological factors, and lack of physical activity to be the primary causes of obesity. latter chapters of Part I grapple with the emotional fallout of obesity in children and teens in a society where thinness is cherished. Part II is a rather lackluster, if informative, examination of the origins of the stigma in obesity. …

Ambition, discrimination, and occupational attainment: a study of a British cohort

Examining British cohort data we find significant differences in the occupational aspirations of boys and girls at age 16 that appear to follow a traditional pattern. To isolate the effect of gender hiring bias on occupational attainment a conditional hiring model is estimated. This separates the occupational preferences of workers to join a pool of job applicants from the hiring decision of employers. Conditional on occupational preferences, we find, in general, no evidence of hiring bias against women except in manual/craft occupations. Failure to control for differences in career aspirations, in this study, produces an overestimate of the extent of occupational sex discrimination of around 60%. Copyright 2001 by Oxford University Press.

Career Rehabilitation: Integration of Vocational Rehabilitation and Career Development in the Twenty‐First Century

The concept of career rehabilitation, a paradigm that proposes integrating perspectives from vocational rehabilitation and career development, is introduced. Counselors are encouraged to assess how vocational handicaps secondary to a disabling problem can affect a client over his or her “worklife” and to adopt a life‐span approach to career decision making of people with disabilities. Four common vocational handicaps are discussed: diminished access to work opportunities, need for workplace accommodations, employer bias in hiring and advancement, and diminished “worklife” expectancy. Counselors testifying in legal forums are encouraged to pursue scholarship on the career development of people with disabilities.

A Legacy of Reform

This autumn marks the one hundredth anniversary of the University of Toronto strike of 1895, an event which capped a ten-year series of disciplinary and political struggles at Toronto. Pork-barrelled appointments and the university's anglophilic hiring bias had angered 'nativist' students and graduates and the 'Canada-Firsters' sitting on the Senate; at issue, too, was the university's relationship to the government (since appointments to the provincial university were government controlled). The intellectual and disciplinary terrain was also shifting: like other universities of the day, Toronto was registering the impact of disciplinary specialization within the humanities, the growth of social science studies, and the demand for honours degrees and new forms of professional training. These concerns repeatedly emerged during a chain of controversies over university appointments, of which the search for a first dedicated professor of English in the winter of 1888–9 was the most public, involving numerous letters to the papers in a contretemps sufficiently sustained to become itself the subject of analysis—and parody—in the press of the day.

Access Decisions by Personnel Directors: Subtle Forms of Sex Bias in Hiring

Midwestern personnel and management association members rated bogus job applications which had identical background qualifications but varied by sex of applicant, sex-role related attributes of applicant, and degree of fit of applicant credentials to job demands. The applicants were rated on their qualifications and likelihood of being considered for the position, expected performance, and expected success in the job. A significant triple interaction was found for the variable that measured the likelihood of the applicant being considered for the position (i.e., access to the position). Higher access ratings were given to the sex—stereotypical applicant when the applicant's credentials matched job demands. When the applicant's credentials did not fit the job demands, raters tended to favor non-stereotypical applicants. Practical and research implications are discussed.

Sex bias in hiring: Effects of job demands and applicant competence

Managers in a large corporation evaluated application materials representing one of eight hypothetical job candidates. In order to examine the effects of two types of information on sex bias, three factors were manipulated in a factorial design: (1) Applicants were either male or female engineers; (2) they appeared highly competent or moderately competent based on academic performance; (3) they were applying for an engineering job that entailed either technical engineering tasks or managerial tasks in addition to the technical tasks. Greater discrimination against women occurred in evaluations for the technical-managerial job, even with highly competent applicants. These results are explained in terms of ambiguity: Because it was not obvious that applicants would succeed on the additional managerial tasks, the evaluators resorted to stereotypes in order to make their predictions.

‘Perverse’ responses by factor users to factor cost changes: Need policy advisors worry?

Three recent theoretical challenges to ‘orthodox’ suggestions that poor countries should revise factor prices have recently appeared — the Keynesian effects discussed in this symposium, reswitching, and a possible bias in new hiring toward high-skilled workers. Arguments as to why all three concerns may be irrelevant for real policy choices are advanced.

Survey Shows Anti-Couple Bias in Hiring, Writers Say

Survey Shows Anti-Couple Bias in Hiring, Writers Say