Reducing discrimination: A bias versus noise perspective

Misplaced Intuitions in Interventions to Reduce Attractiveness-Based Discrimination

Individuals and organizations are increasing efforts to address discrimination. Nonexperts may lack awareness of, or are resistant to, scientifically informed strategies for reducing discrimination, instead relying on intuition. Five studies investigated the accuracy of nonexperts' intuitions about reducing discrimination concerning physical attractiveness. In Studies 1a to 1c (N = 902), participants predicted the effectiveness of six interventions to reduce attractiveness-based favoritism on a judgment task. Studies 2a and 2b (N = 6,292) investigated the effectiveness of these interventions. Although two interventions reduced discrimination, intuitions were poorly aligned with actual results; fewer than 1% of participants identified the combination of interventions that did, versus did not, impact judgment, and responses were more likely to be below than above chance when predicting each intervention's effectiveness. Although follow-up work should investigate the accuracy of intuition in other forms of discrimination, these results further stress the need for greater development and adoption of evidence-based strategies for combating discrimination.

Reducing discrimination against job seekers with and without employment gaps

Past research shows that decision-makers discriminate against applicants with career breaks. Career breaks are common due to caring responsibilities, especially for working mothers, thereby leaving job seekers with employment gaps on their résumés. In a preregistered audit field experiment in the United Kingdom (n = 9,022), we show that rewriting a résumé so that previously held jobs are listed with the number of years worked (instead of employment dates) increases callbacks from real employers compared to résumés without employment gaps by approximately 8%, and with employment gaps by 15%. A series of lab studies (an online pilot and two preregistered experiments; n = 2,650) shows that this effect holds for both female and male applicants-even when compared to applicants without employment gaps-as well as and for applicants with less and more total job experience. The effect is driven by making the applicant's job experience salient, not as a result of novelty or ease of reading.

Time pressure reduces misinformation discrimination ability but does not alter response bias

Many parts of our social lives are speeding up, a process known as social acceleration. How social acceleration impacts people's ability to judge the veracity of online news, and ultimately the spread of misinformation, is largely unknown. We examined the effects of accelerated online dynamics, operationalised as time pressure, on online misinformation evaluation. Participants judged the veracity of true and false news headlines with or without time pressure. We used signal detection theory to disentangle the effects of time pressure on discrimination ability and response bias, as well as on four key determinants of misinformation susceptibility: analytical thinking, ideological congruency, motivated reflection, and familiarity. Time pressure reduced participants' ability to accurately distinguish true from false news (discrimination ability) but did not alter their tendency to classify an item as true or false (response bias). Key drivers of misinformation susceptibility, such as ideological congruency and familiarity, remained influential under time pressure. Our results highlight the dangers of social acceleration online: People are less able to accurately judge the veracity of news online, while prominent drivers of misinformation susceptibility remain present. Interventions aimed at increasing deliberation may thus be fruitful avenues to combat online misinformation.