Bayesian Bigot? Statistical Discrimination, Stereotypes, and Employer Decision Making

Devah Pager and Diana Karafin
Additional contact information
Devah Pager: Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, pager@princeton.edu
Diana Karafin: Ohio State University

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2009, vol. 621, issue 1, 70-93

Abstract: Much of the debate over the underlying causes of discrimination centers on the rationality of employer decision making. Economic models of statistical discrimination emphasize the cognitive utility of group estimates as a means of dealing with the problems of uncertainty. Sociological and social-psychological models, by contrast, question the accuracy of group-level attributions. Although mean differences may exist between groups on productivity-related characteristics, these differences are often inflated in their application, leading to much larger differences in individual evaluations than would be warranted by actual group-level trait distributions. In this study, the authors examine the nature of employer attitudes about black and white workers and the extent to which these views are calibrated against their direct experiences with workers from each group. They use data from fifty-five in-depth interviews with hiring managers to explore employers' group-level attributions and their direct observations to develop a model of attitude formation and employer learning.

Keywords: racial discrimination; employment; employer interviews; African Americans; stereotypes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716208324628 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:621:y:2009:i:1:p:70-93

DOI: 10.1177/0002716208324628

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().