When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint Versus Separate Evaluation
37 Pages Posted: 19 Jun 2012
Date Written: March 16, 2012
Abstract
We examine a new intervention to overcome gender biases in hiring, promotion, and job assignments: an “evaluation nudge,” in which people are evaluated jointly rather than separately regarding their future performance. Evaluators are more likely to focus on individual performance in joint than in separate evaluation and on group stereotypes in separate than in joint evaluation, making joint evaluation the money-maximizing evaluation procedure. Our findings are compatible with a behavioral model of information processing and with the System 1/System 2 distinction in behavioral decision research where people have two distinct modes of thinking that are activated under certain conditions.
Keywords: gender bias, decision science
JEL Classification: C91, D03
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation