Aversion to Hiring Algorithms: Transparency, Gender Profiling, and Self-Confidence

39 Pages Posted: 7 Oct 2022

See all articles by Marie-Pierre Dargnies

Marie-Pierre Dargnies

Université Paris Dauphine

Rustamdjan Hakimov

WZB Berlin Social Science Center; University of Lausanne

Dorothea Kübler

Social Science Research Center (WZB); Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) - Faculty of Economics and Management

Date Written: 2022

Abstract

We run an online experiment to study the origins of algorithm aversion. Participants are either in the role of workers or of managers. Workers perform three real-effort tasks: task 1, task 2, and the job task which is a combination of tasks 1 and 2. They choose whether the hiring decision between themselves and another worker is made either by a participant in the role of a manager or by an algorithm. In a second set of experiments, managers choose whether they want to delegate their hiring decisions to the algorithm. In the baseline treatments, we observe that workers choose the manager more often than the algorithm, and managers also prefer to make the hiring decisions themselves rather than delegate them to the algorithm. When the algorithm does not use workers’ gender to predict their job task performance and workers know this, they choose the algorithm more often. Providing details on how the algorithm works does not increase the preference for the algorithm, neither for workers nor for managers. Providing feedback to managers about their performance in hiring the best workers increases their preference for the algorithm, as managers are, on average, overconfident.

Keywords: algorithm aversion, experiment, hiring discrimination, transparency

Suggested Citation

Dargnies, Marie-Pierre and Hakimov, Rustamdjan and Hakimov, Rustamdjan and Kübler, Dorothea F., Aversion to Hiring Algorithms: Transparency, Gender Profiling, and Self-Confidence (2022). CESifo Working Paper No. 9968, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4238275 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4238275

Marie-Pierre Dargnies (Contact Author)

Université Paris Dauphine ( email )

Place du Maréchal de Tassigny
Paris, Cedex 16 75775
France

Rustamdjan Hakimov

WZB Berlin Social Science Center ( email )

Reichpietschufer 50
D-10785 Berlin, 10785
Germany

University of Lausanne ( email )

Quartier Chambronne
Lausanne, 1016
Switzerland

Dorothea F. Kübler

Social Science Research Center (WZB) ( email )

Reichpietschufer 50
D-10785 Berlin, 10785
Germany
40 30 25491440 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.wzb.eu/mp/vam/people/dorothea_kuebler.de.htm

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) - Faculty of Economics and Management ( email )

D-10623 Berlin
Germany
+49 30 31425263 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.wiwi-experimente.tu-berlin.de/

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