Daily horizons: evidence of narrow bracketing in judgment from 10 years of M.B.A. admissions interviews

How Can Debiasing Research Aid Efforts to Reduce Discrimination?

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

Scientists studying intergroup biases are often concerned with lessening discrimination (unequal treatment of one social group versus another), but many interventions for reducing such biased behavior have weak or limited evidence. In this review article, we argue one productive avenue for reducing discrimination comes from adapting interventions in a separate field-judgment and decision-making-that has historically studied "debiasing": the ways people can lessen the unwanted influence of irrelevant information on decision-making. While debiasing research shares several commonalities with research on reducing intergroup discrimination, many debiasing interventions have relied on methods that differ from those deployed in the intergroup bias literature. We review several instances where debiasing principles have been successfully applied toward reducing intergroup biases in behavior and introduce other debiasing techniques that may be well-suited for future efforts in lessening discrimination.

Exploring Potential Schedule-Related and Gender Biases in Ophthalmology Residency Interview Scores

Purpose Prior studies have revealed grading discrepancies in evaluation of personal statements and letters of recommendation based on candidate's race and gender. Fatigue and the end-of-day phenomenon can negatively impact task performance but have not been studied in the residency selection process. Our primary objective is to determine whether factors related to interview time and day as well as candidate's and interviewer's gender have a significant effect on residency interview scores.

Methods Seven years of ophthalmology residency candidate evaluation scores from 2013 to 2019 were collected at a single academic institution, standardized by interviewer into relative percentiles (0–100 point grading scale), and grouped into the following categories for comparisons: different interview days (Day 1 vs. Day 2), morning versus afternoon (AM vs. PM), interview session (Day 1 AM/PM vs. Day 2 AM/PM), before and after breaks (morning break, lunch break, and afternoon break), residency candidate's gender, and interviewer's gender.

Results Candidates in the morning sessions were found to have higher scores than afternoon sessions (52.75 vs. 49.28, p < 0.001). Interview scores in the early morning, late morning, and early afternoon were higher than late afternoon scores (54.47, 53.01, 52.15 vs. 46.74, p < 0.001). Across all interview years, there were no differences in scores received before and after morning breaks (51.71 vs. 52.83, p = 0.49), lunch breaks (53.01 vs. 52.15, p = 0.58), and afternoon breaks (50.35 vs. 48.30, p = 0.21). No differences were found in scores received by female versus male candidates (51.55 vs. 50.49, p = 0.21) or scores given by female versus male interviewers (51.31 vs. 50.84, p = 0.58).

Conclusion Afternoon residency candidate interview scores, especially late afternoon, were significantly lower than morning scores, suggesting the need to further study the effects of interviewer's fatigue in the residency interview process. The interview day, presence of break times, candidate's gender, and interviewer's gender had no significant effects on interview score.

Lenience breeds strictness: The generosity-erosion effect in hiring decisions

In recruitment processes, candidates are often judged one after another. This sequential procedure affects the outcome of the process. Here, we introduce the generosity-erosion effect, which states that evaluators might be harsher in their assessment of candidates after grading previous candidates generously. Generosity is defined as giving a candidate the lowest possible grade required to progress in the hiring process. Analyzing a high-stake hiring process, we find that for each candidate graded generously, the probability for subsequent candidates to pass decreased by 7.7% (experiment 1; N = 11,281). Testing the boundary conditions of the generosity-effect, we explore a hiring process that, in contrast to the previous process, was very selective, because candidates were more likely to fail than to pass. In this scenario, no evidence is found for the generosity-erosion effect (experiment 2; N = 3171). Practical implications and mechanisms underlying the generosity-erosion effect are further discussed.

Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment

Why do some social problems seem so intractable? In a series of experiments, we show that people often respond to decreases in the prevalence of a stimulus by expanding their concept of it. When blue dots became rare, participants began to see purple dots as blue; when threatening faces became rare, participants began to see neutral faces as threatening; and when unethical requests became rare, participants began to see innocuous requests as unethical. This “prevalence-induced concept change” occurred even when participants were forewarned about it and even when they were instructed and paid to resist it. Social problems may seem intractable in part because reductions in their prevalence lead people to see more of them.