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A contest study to reduce attractiveness-based discrimination in social judgment
Roy,Eliane Jaeger,Bastian Evans,Anthony M Turetsky,Kate M O'Shea,Brian A Petersen,Michael Bang Singh,Balbir Correll,Joshua Zheng,Denise Yiran Brown,Kirk Warren
Roy,Eliane
Jaeger,Bastian
Evans,Anthony M
Turetsky,Kate M
O'Shea,Brian A
Petersen,Michael Bang
Singh,Balbir
Correll,Joshua
Zheng,Denise Yiran
Brown,Kirk Warren
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).
Description
Date
2025-03
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
bias, discrimination, physical attractiveness, political orientation, research contest, SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities
Citation
Roy, E, Jaeger, B, Evans, A M, Turetsky, K M, O'Shea, B A, Petersen, M B, Singh, B, Correll, J, Zheng, D Y, Brown, K W, Kirgios, E L, Chang, L W, Chang, E H, Steele, J R, Sebastien, J, Sedgewick, J R, Hackney, A, Cook, R, Yang, X, Korkmaz, A, Sim, J J, Khan, N, Primbs, M A, Bijlstra, G, Faure, R, Karremans, J C, Santos, L A, Voelkel, J G, Marini, M, Chen, J M, Brown, T, Yoon, H, Morewedge, C K, Scopelliti, I, Hester, N, Shen, X, Ma, M, Medvedev, D, Ritchie, E G, Lu, C, Chang, Y-P, Kumar, A, Banerji, R, Gretton, J D, Schnabel, L, Teachman, B A, Kristal, A S, Chua, K-W, Freeman, J B, Fath, S, Grigoryan, L, Weißflog, M I, Daryani, Y, Pourhosein, R, Johnson, S K, Chan, E T, Stevens, S M, Anderson, S, Beaty, R E, Rubichi, S, Cocco, V M, Vezzali, L, Lai, C K & Axt, J R 2025, 'A contest study to reduce attractiveness-based discrimination in social judgment', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 128, no. 3, pp. 508-535. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000414