"We choose this CV because we choose diversity" - What do eye movements say about the choices recruiters make?

Introduction

A large body of research has established a consensus that racial discrimination in CV screening occurs and persists. Nevertheless, we still know very little about how recruiters look at the CV and how this is connected to the discriminatory patterns. This article examines the way recruiters view and select CVs and how they reason about their CV selection choices, as a first step in unpacking the patterns of hiring discrimination. Specifically, we explore how race and ethnicity signaled through the CV matter, and how recruiters reason about the choices they make.

Methods

We recorded data from 40 respondents (20 pairs) who are real-life recruiters with experiences in recruitment of diverse employees in three large Swedish-based firms in the finance and retail sector in two large cities. The participating firms all value diversity, equity and inclusion in their recruitment. Their task was to individually rate 10 fictious CVs where race (signaled by face image) and ethnicity (signaled by name) were systematically manipulated, select the top three candidates, and then discuss their choices in pairs to decide on a single top candidate. We examined whether respondents' choices were associated with the parts of the CV they looked at, and how they reasoned and justified their choices through dialog.

Results

Our results show that non-White CVs were rated higher than White CVs. While we do not observe any statistically significant differences in the ratings between different racial groups, we see a statistically significant preference for Chinese over Iraqi names. There were no significant differences in time spent looking at the CV across different racial groups, but respondents looked longer at Polish names compared to Swedish names when presented next to a White face. The dialog data reveal how respondents assess different CVs by making assumptions about the candidates' job and organizational fit through limited information on the CVs, especially when the qualifications of the candidates are evaluated to be equal.

Who is the majority group? Signaling majority group membership with name-based treatments in multilingual contexts: The case of Catalonia

An increasing body of work has shown how the selection of names shapes patterns of ethnic and racial discrimination in hiring observed in correspondence audit studies. A clear limitation of the existing research on name perceptions and ethnic discrimination in employment is that is predominantly based in the US, which limits its applicability to contexts with high linguistic diversity among the majority population. These territories confront a reality where language preferences and uses, social class, and ancestry are associated with specific names among the native majority group. The result is notable diversity in the labor market (dis)advantages conferred by different names within the majority population. To fill this gap, this article focuses on Catalonia, a diverse multilingual region and Spain's second most populated area. Using two complementary studies, this work identifies the direct influence of names in the hiring process (Study 1) and evaluates the associations between names and perceptions of geographic origin, social class, and linguistic competence (Study 2). The results show that having a Catalan name confers an advantage in the labour market via three mechanisms. First, names inform a perception of language proficiency, which is tied to an expectation of productivity. Second, names signal social class and certain names in the majority group (applicants with two Catalan surnames, a minority within the region), indicate higher social class, which affords an advantage. Third, some advantage could be linked to tastes that favor an ingroup for reasons of assumed cultural, historical, or political compatibility. The approach adopted in this article holds significant relevance to other research on ethnic discrimination conducted in multilingual contexts with comparable autochthonous diversity.

Taste Preference-Related Genetic Polymorphisms Modify Alcohol Consumption Behavior of the Hungarian General and Roma Populations

Harmful alcohol consumption has been considered a major public health issue globally, with the amounts of alcohol drunk being highest in the WHO European Region including Hungary. Alcohol consumption behaviors are complex human traits influenced by environmental factors and numerous genes. Beyond alcohol metabolization and neurotransmitter gene polymorphisms, taste preference-related genetic variants may also mediate alcohol consumption behaviors. Applying the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) we aimed to elucidate the underlying genetic determinants of alcohol consumption patterns considering taste preference gene polymorphisms (TAS1R3 rs307355, TAS2R38 rs713598, TAS2R19 rs10772420 and CA6 rs2274333) in the Hungarian general (HG) and Roma (HR) populations. Alcohol consumption assessment was available for 410 HG and 387 HR individuals with 405 HG and 364 HR DNA samples being obtained for genotyping. No significant associations were found between TAS1R3 rs307355, TAS2R19 rs10772420, and CA6 rs2274333 polymorphisms and alcohol consumption phenotypes. Significant associations were identified between TAS2R38 rs713598 and the number of standard drinks consumed in the HG sample (genotype GG negatively correlated with the number of standard drinks; coef: -0.136, p = 0.028) and the prevalence of having six or more drinks among Roma (a negative correlation was identified in the recessive model; genotype GG, coef: -0.170, p = 0.049), although, none of these findings passed the Bonferroni-corrected probability criterion (p > 0.05). Nevertheless, our findings may suggest that alcohol consumption is partially driven by genetically determined taste preferences in our study populations. Further studies are required to strengthen the findings and to understand the drivers of alcohol consumption behavior in more depth.

Alcohol consumption patterns of the Hungarian general and Roma populations

Introduction

Harmful alcohol use is a significant public health problem worldwide, though the alcohol-related burden affects disproportionately certain populations and ethnic minorities, with the WHO European Region being the most heavily affected and putting an increased risk on Roma populations. This ethnic minority group is the largest and most vulnerable ethnic minority in Europe and Hungary as well.

Methods

The present study aims to describe and compare the alcohol consumption behaviors of the Hungarian general and Roma populations using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), which provides a comprehensive view of alcohol consumption behavior. In addition, a decomposition analysis was performed when the multivariate logistic or Poisson regression model showed significant differences between the two samples.

Results

Our findings suggest that Roma people in our study sample experience more alcohol-related harm, even when considering past problems. The decomposition analysis revealed that gender and relationship status differences act more intensely among Roma than non-Roma when considering alcohol-related harm.

Discussion

Equalizing these differences would be expected to reduce the Hungarian general and Roma populations' alcohol-related harm frequency gap. Investigating alcohol-attributed harms at the ethnicity level provides important information to identify high-risk groups and, thus, to design and implement more targeted and accessible interventions for alcohol problems.

The Gender Employment Gap among Refugees and the Role of Employer Discrimination: Experimental Evidence from the German, Swedish and Austrian Labor Markets

Compared to their male counterparts, refugee women exhibit low employment rates in many countries. Discrimination by recruiters could possibly explain this phenomenon, but thus far, there is little direct evidence on this. This study addresses this gap. We develop a set of hypotheses about the effects of gender and family status on refugees’ labor market integration, and then test these hypotheses using data from an original survey experiment administered in 2019 to online panels of recruiters in three major refugee-receiving countries (Germany, Austria, and Sweden). We find that recruiters indeed prefer female over male refugees across different job types, all else equal. However, we also find evidence of a disadvantage connected with motherhood among refugees. Overall, our findings raise doubts about the relevance of discrimination as an explanation for the observed employment gap between male and female refugees.

The language of discrimination: assessing attention discrimination by Hungarian local governments

In our study we assess the responsiveness of Hungarian local governments to requests for information by Roma and non-Roma clients, relying on a nationwide correspondence study. Our paper has both methodological and substantive relevance. The methodological novelty is that we treat discrimination as a classification problem and study to what extent emails written to Roma and non-Roma clients can be distinguished, which in turn serves as a metric of discrimination in general. We show that it is possible to detect discrimination in textual data in an automated way without human coding, and that machine learning (ML) may detect features of discrimination that human coders may not recognize. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first attempt to assess discrimination using ML techniques. From a substantive point of view, our study focuses on linguistic features the algorithm detects behind the discrimination. Our models worked significantly better compared to random classification (the accuracy of the best of our models was 61%), confirming the differential treatment of Roma clients. The most important predictors showed that the answers sent to ostensibly Roma clients are not only shorter, but their tone is less polite and more reserved, supporting the idea of attention discrimination, in line with the results of Bartos et al. (2016). A higher level of attention discrimination is detectable against male senders, and in smaller settlements. Also, our results can be interpreted as digital discrimination in the sense in which Edelman and Luca (2014) use this term.

Gender and Racial Discrimination in Hiring Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Experiment of Accountants, 2018-2020

In this article, we ask whether macro-level changes during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic relate to changes in the levels of discrimination against women and Black job-seekers at the point of hire. We develop three main hypotheses: that discrimination against women and Black job-seekers increases due to a reduction in labor demand; that discrimination against women decreases due to the reduced supply of women employees and applicants; and that discrimination against Black job-seekers decreases due to increased attention toward racial inequities associated with the Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020. We test these hypotheses using a correspondence audit study collected over two periods, before and during the early COVID-19 pandemic, for one professional occupation: accountants. We find that White women experience a positive change in callbacks during the pandemic, being preferred over White men, and this change is concentrated in geographic areas that experienced relatively larger decreases in women's labor supply. Black women experience discrimination pre-pandemic but receive similar callbacks to White men during the pandemic. In contrast to both White and Black women, discrimination against Black men is persistent before and during the pandemic. Our findings are consistent with the prediction of gender-specific changes in labor supply being associated with gender-specific changes in hiring discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic. More broadly, our study shows how hiring decision-making is related to macro-level labor market processes.

Civic engagement and self-empowerment of second-generation Vietnamese in Czechia

The first cohort of Czech second-generation Vietnamese has only recently reached adulthood. Raised by Czech nannies, they received early socialization into Czech society, while Vietnamese culture remained unfamiliar. With this childhood experience, the generation grew into young adulthood questioning their identity/identities. Caught between social and normative pressures from both the Vietnamese community and Czech society, the formation of associations by second-generation Vietnamese can be a means to respond to their disadvantaged position. Based on in-depth interviews with leaders of these associations and participant observation of their activities, the article examines the goals and activities of second-generation associations (SGAs) and compares them with first-generation immigrant organizations. SGAs are shown to fill the gap of parents as key role models of socialization in Czech society and as platforms to enhance the self-confidence and sense of social responsibility of second-generation Vietnamese in Czechia.

Covid-19 crisis and hostility against foreigners

Harmful behavior against out-group members often rises during periods of economic hardship and health pandemics. Here, we test the widespread concern that the Covid-19 crisis may fuel hostility against people from other nations. Using a controlled money-burning task, we elicited hostile behavior among a nationally representative sample (n = 2,186) in the Czech Republic during the first wave of the pandemic. We provide evidence that exogenously elevating the salience of the Covid-19 crisis increases hostility against foreigners from the EU, USA and Asia. This behavioral response is similar across various demographic sub-groups. Further, we observe zero to small negative effects for both domestic out-groups and in-groups, suggesting that the salience of Covid-19 might negatively affect behavior not only towards foreigners but to other people more generally, though these findings are not conclusive. The results underscore the importance of not inflaming anti-foreigner sentiments and suggest the need to monitor impacts of the crisis on behavior in the social domain.

The "Big Two" in Hiring Discrimination: Evidence From a Cross-National Field Experiment

We tested whether signaling warmth and competence (“Big Two”) in job applications increases hiring chances. Drawing on a field experimental data from five European countries, we analyzed the responses of employers (N = 13,162) to applications from fictitious candidates of different origin: native candidates and candidates of European, Asian, or Middle-Eastern/African descent. We found that competence signals slightly increased invitation rates, while warmth signals had no effect. We also found ethnic discrimination, a female premium, and differences in callbacks depending on job characteristics. Importantly, however, providing stereotype signals did not reduce the level of ethnic discrimination or the female premium. Likewise, we found little evidence for interactions between stereotype signals and job demands. While speaking against the importance of “Big Two” signals in application documents, our results highlight the importance of group membership and hopefully stimulate further research on the role of in particular ethnic stereotypes for discrimination in hiring.

Monitoring hiring discrimination through online recruitment platforms

Women (compared to men) and individuals from minority ethnic groups (compared to the majority group) face unfavourable labour market outcomes in many economies^1,2, but the extent to which discrimination is responsible for these effects, and the channels through which they occur, remain unclear^3,4. Although correspondence tests⁵-in which researchers send fictitious CVs that are identical except for the randomized minority trait to be tested (for example, names that are deemed to sound 'Black' versus those deemed to sound 'white')-are an increasingly popular method to quantify discrimination in hiring practices^6,7, they can usually consider only a few applicant characteristics in select occupations at a particular point in time. To overcome these limitations, here we develop an approach to investigate hiring discrimination that combines tracking of the search behaviour of recruiters on employment websites and supervised machine learning to control for all relevant jobseeker characteristics that are visible to recruiters. We apply this methodology to the online recruitment platform of the Swiss public employment service and find that rates of contact by recruiters are 4-19% lower for individuals from immigrant and minority ethnic groups, depending on their country of origin, than for citizens from the majority group. Women experience a penalty of 7% in professions that are dominated by men, and the opposite pattern emerges for men in professions that are dominated by women. We find no evidence that recruiters spend less time evaluating the profiles of individuals from minority ethnic groups. Our methodology provides a widely applicable, non-intrusive and cost-efficient tool that researchers and policy-makers can use to continuously monitor hiring discrimination, to identify some of the drivers of discrimination and to inform approaches to counter it.

Is there evidence for statistical discrimination against ethnic minorities in hiring? Evidence from a cross-national field experiment

While statistical discrimination theory is often proposed as an important explanation for ethnic discrimination in hiring, research that empirically scrutinizes its underlying assumptions is scant. To test these assumptions, we combine data from a cross-national field experiment with secondary data indicative of the average labor productivity of ethnic communities. We find little evidence that adding diagnostic personal information reduces discrimination against ethnic minorities. Furthermore, we do not find an association between language similarity or the socioeconomic resources of the ethnic community and hiring discrimination. However, our findings show that discrimination is related to the socioeconomic development of the country of ancestry. Finally, the impact of these indicators of group productivity is generally not moderated by the amount of diagnostic personal information. Taken together, these findings question several core assumptions of statistical discrimination theory.

Multiple Discrimination against Female Immigrants Wearing Headscarves

Western countries have experienced a large influx of Muslim immigrants, and concomitantly the Muslim headscarf has become the subject of major controversy. Drawing on theories of stigma, social identity, and multiple discrimination/intersectionality, this study examines the effect of wearing this headscarf in the German labor market. The author applies the method of correspondence testing that allows measuring discrimination in a controlled field setting. Findings show that when applying for a job in Germany, women with a Turkish migration background are less likely to be invited for an interview, and the level of discrimination increases substantially if the applicant wears a headscarf. The results suggest that immigrant women who wear a headscarf suffer discrimination based on multiple stigmas related to ethnicity and religion.

Behavioural challenges of minorities: Social identity and role models

We present a lab-in-the-field experiment and surveys of marginalised Roma children in Slovakia to examine whether reminding Roma of their ethnicity reduces their performance in a cognitive task. Research on social identity and stereotypes has documented that when individuals feel that their social group is negatively stereotyped in a domain, their performance declines, which can reinforce discrimination. In an effort to break the cycle of negative stereotypes, we remind Roma subjects of either Roma or non-Roma role models. We find that the activation of a Roma’s ethnicity reduces cognitive performance. In contrast, Roma exposed to Roma role models outperform those reminded of their ethnicity and of non-Roma role models. We then attempt to understand the channels through which social identity and role models affect performance. We show that priming the identity of a Roma has a direct effect on confidence, decreasing performance.

Frictions or Mental Gaps: What’s Behind the Information We (Don’t) Use and When Do We Care?

Consumers suffer significant losses from not acting on available information. These losses stem from frictions such as search costs, switching costs, and rational inattention, as well as what we call mental gaps resulting from wrong priors/worldviews, or relevant features of a problem not being top of mind. Most research studying such losses does not empirically distinguish between these mechanisms. Instead, we show that most highly cited papers in this area presume one mechanism underlies consumer choices and assume away other potential explanations, or collapse many mechanisms together. We discuss the empirical difficulties that arise in distinguishing between different mechanisms, and some promising approaches for making progress in doing so. We also assess when it is more or less important for researchers to distinguish between these mechanisms. Approaches that seek to identify true value from demand, without specifying mechanisms behind this wedge, are most useful when researchers are interested in evaluating allocation policies that strongly steer consumers towards better options with regulation, traditional policy instruments, and defaults. On the other hand, understanding the precise mechanisms underlying consumer losses is essential to predicting the impact of mechanism policies aimed primarily at reducing specific frictions or mental gaps without otherwise steering consumers. We make the case that papers engaging with these questions empirically should be clear about whether their analyses distinguish between mechanisms behind poorly informed choices, and what that implies for the questions they can answer. We present examples from several empirical contexts to highlight these distinctions.