IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v206y2023icp296-312.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Potential in-group bias at work: Evidence from performance evaluations

Author

Listed:
  • Eren, Ozkan

Abstract

This paper investigates the existence of in-group bias (preferential treatment of one’s own group) in performance evaluations. Drawing information from an educational setting and employing a unique dataset, we use principals’ observational assessment of teachers to examine the impact of gender interactions on evaluation of employees. Our results indicate that average classroom observation ratings for female teachers, relative to males, were 0.19 of a standard deviation higher when they were evaluated by female principals. We explore the mechanisms and present convincing sets of results consistent with the tendency of superiors to favor same-gender subordinates. Several robustness checks and different placebo tests support our findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Eren, Ozkan, 2023. "Potential in-group bias at work: Evidence from performance evaluations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 296-312.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:206:y:2023:i:c:p:296-312
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.11.030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122004401
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.11.030?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott E. Carrell & Marianne E. Page & James E. West, 2010. "Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1101-1144.
    2. Dylan Glover & Amanda Pallais & William Pariente, 2017. "Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(3), pages 1219-1260.
    3. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2016. "The Evolution of Gender Gaps in Industrialized Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 405-434, October.
    4. Alberto Alesina & Michela Carlana & Eliana La Ferrara & Paolo Pinotti, 2018. "Revealing Stereotypes: Evidence from Immigrants in Schools," NBER Working Papers 25333, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. David Neumark & Roy J. Bank & Kyle D. Van Nort, 1996. "Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: An Audit Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 915-941.
    6. Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1859-1887.
    7. Nicholas W. Papageorge & Seth Gershenson & Kyung Min Kang, 2020. "Teacher Expectations Matter," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(2), pages 234-251, May.
    8. Bentley W. MacLeod, 2003. "Optimal Contracting with Subjective Evaluation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 216-240, March.
    9. Christina L. Boyd & Lee Epstein & Andrew D. Martin, 2010. "Untangling the Causal Effects of Sex on Judging," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(2), pages 389-411, April.
    10. Francine D. Blau & Lawrence M. Kahn, 2017. "The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(3), pages 789-865, September.
    11. David Card & Ana Rute Cardoso & Patrick Kline, 2016. "Bargaining, Sorting, and the Gender Wage Gap: Quantifying the Impact of Firms on the Relative Pay of Women," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(2), pages 633-686.
    12. Jeffrey R Kling & Jeffrey B Liebman & Lawrence F Katz, 2007. "Experimental Analysis of Neighborhood Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 83-119, January.
    13. Robert W. Fairlie & Florian Hoffmann & Philip Oreopoulos, 2014. "A Community College Instructor Like Me: Race and Ethnicity Interactions in the Classroom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2567-2591, August.
    14. Aliza N. Husain & David A. Matsa & Amalia R. Miller, 2023. "Do Male Workers Prefer Male Leaders? An Analysis of Principals’ Effects on Teacher Retention," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 58(5), pages 1480-1522.
    15. George Baker & Robert Gibbons & Kevin J. Murphy, 1994. "Subjective Performance Measures in Optimal Incentive Contracts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1125-1156.
    16. Friederike Mengel & Jan Sauermann & Ulf Zölitz, 2019. "Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 535-566.
    17. Jonathan P. Kastellec, 2013. "Racial Diversity and Judicial Influence on Appellate Courts," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(1), pages 167-183, January.
    18. Thomas S. Dee, 2004. "Teachers, Race, and Student Achievement in a Randomized Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 195-210, February.
    19. Sule Alan & Seda Ertac & Ipek Mumcu, 2018. "Gender Stereotypes in the Classroom and Effects on Achievement," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(5), pages 876-890, December.
    20. Eric P. Bettinger & Bridget Terry Long, 2005. "Do Faculty Serve as Role Models? The Impact of Instructor Gender on Female Students," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 152-157, May.
    21. Marianne Bertrand & Sandra E Black & Sissel Jensen & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2019. "Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Effect of Board Quotas on Female Labour Market Outcomes in Norway," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(1), pages 191-239.
    22. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2008. "Can Principals Identify Effective Teachers? Evidence on Subjective Performance Evaluation in Education," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 101-136.
    23. Cecilia Rouse & Claudia Goldin, 2000. "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 715-741, September.
    24. Sabrin Beg & Anne Fitzpatrick & Adrienne M. Lucas, 2021. "Gender Bias in Assessments of Teacher Performance," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 190-195, May.
    25. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    26. Goldin, Claudia D. & Rouse, Cecilia, 2000. "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind†Auditions on Female Musicians," Scholarly Articles 30703974, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    27. M. Marit Rehavi & Sonja B. Starr, 2014. "Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Sentences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(6), pages 1320-1354.
    28. Michela Carlana, 2019. "Implicit Stereotypes: Evidence from Teachers’ Gender Bias," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(3), pages 1163-1224.
    29. Shamena Anwar & Hanming Fang, 2006. "An Alternative Test of Racial Prejudice in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 127-151, March.
    30. Claudia Olivetti & Barbara Petrongolo, 2016. "The Evolution of Gender Gaps in Industrialized Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 405-434, October.
    31. Claudia Goldin, 2014. "A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1091-1119, April.
    32. Jonah E. Rockoff & Douglas O. Staiger & Thomas J. Kane & Eric S. Taylor, 2012. "Information and Employee Evaluation: Evidence from a Randomized Intervention in Public Schools," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3184-3213, December.
    33. Prendergast, Canice & Topel, Robert H, 1996. "Favoritism in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(5), pages 958-978, October.
    34. Florian Hoffmann & Philip Oreopoulos, 2009. "A Professor Like Me: The Influence of Instructor Gender on College Achievement," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(2).
    35. William Fuchs, 2015. "Subjective Evaluations: Discretionary Bonuses and Feedback Credibility," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 99-108, February.
    36. Heather Antecol & Ozkan Eren & Serkan Ozbeklik, 2015. "The Effect of Teacher Gender on Student Achievement in Primary School," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 63-89.
    37. Jason A. Grissom & Brendan Bartanen, 2022. "Potential Race and Gender Biases in High‐Stakes Teacher Observations," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(1), pages 131-161, January.
    38. Prendergast, Canice & Topel, Robert, 1993. "Discretion and bias in performance evaluation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 355-365, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Armenak Antinyan & Tigran Aydinyan & Anna Ressi & Lilia Wasserka-Zhurakhovska, 2023. "An Experimental Analysis of In-Group Favoritism and Out-Group Discrimination in the Gain and Loss Domain," CESifo Working Paper Series 10606, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rocco Macchiavello & Andreas Menzel & Atonu Rabbani & Christopher Woodruff, 2020. "Challenges of Change: An Experiment Promoting Women to Managerial Roles in the Bangladeshi Garment Sector," NBER Working Papers 27606, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Barron, Kai & Ditlmann, Ruth & Gehrig, Stefan & Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Sebastian, 2020. "Explicit and implicit belief-based gender discrimination: A hiring experiment," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2020-306, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Katherine B. Coffman & Christine L. Exley & Muriel Niederle, 2021. "The Role of Beliefs in Driving Gender Discrimination," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3551-3569, June.
    4. My Nguyen, 2018. "The Relationship between Race-Congruent Students and Teachers: Does Racial Discrimination Exist?," Departmental Working Papers 2018-06, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    5. Takao Kato & Yang Song, 2022. "Advising, gender, and performance: Evidence from a university with exogenous adviser–student gender match," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 121-141, January.
    6. Michela Carlana, 2019. "Implicit Stereotypes: Evidence from Teachers’ Gender Bias," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(3), pages 1163-1224.
    7. Eble, Alex & Hu, Feng, 2020. "Child beliefs, societal beliefs, and teacher-student identity match," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Itzik Fadlon & Frederik Plesner Lyngse & Torben Heien Nielsen, 2022. "Early Career Setbacks and Women’s Career-Family Trade-Off," CEBI working paper series 22-06, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    9. Gagnon, Nickolas & Bosmans, Kristof & Riedl, Arno, 2020. "The Effect of Unfair Chances and Gender Discrimination on Labor Supply," Research Memorandum 005, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    10. Grewenig, Elisabeth & Lergetporer, Philipp & Werner, Katharina, 2020. "Gender Norms and Labor-Supply Expectations: Experimental Evidence from Adolescents," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 259, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    11. Chris Birdsall & Seth Gershenson & Raymond Zuniga, 2020. "The Effects of Demographic Mismatch in an Elite Professional School Setting," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 457-486, Summer.
    12. Menzel, Andreas & Woodruff, Christopher, 2021. "Gender wage gaps and worker mobility: Evidence from the garment sector in Bangladesh," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    13. Fluchtmann, Jonas & Glenny, Anita Marie & Harmon, Nikolaj & Maibom, Jonas, 2021. "The Gender Application Gap: Do Men and Women Apply for the Same Jobs?," IZA Discussion Papers 14906, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. J. Michelle Brock & Ralph De Haas, 2023. "Discriminatory Lending: Evidence from Bankers in the Lab," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 31-68, April.
    15. Karthik Muralidharan & Ketki Sheth, 2016. "Bridging Education Gender Gaps in Developing Countries: The Role of Female Teachers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(2), pages 269-297.
    16. J. Aislinn Bohren & Alex Imas & Michael Rosenberg, 2019. "The Dynamics of Discrimination: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(10), pages 3395-3436, October.
    17. My Nguyen & Kien Le, 2023. "Racial/ethnic match and student–teacher relationships," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(2), pages 393-412, April.
    18. Ulf Nielsson & Herdis Steingrimsdottir, 2018. "The signalling value of education across genders," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(4), pages 1827-1854, June.
    19. Höckel, Lisa, 2019. "Speaking the same language - The effect of foreign origin teachers on students’ language skills," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203638, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Jiang Li & Benoit Dostie & Gäelle Simard-Duplain, 2020. "What is the Role of Firm-Specific Pay Policies on the Gender Earnings Gap in Canada?," CIRANO Working Papers 2020s-67, CIRANO.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Differential sorting; Employee performance evaluations; Same-gender bias; Subjectivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • J10 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - General
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:206:y:2023:i:c:p:296-312. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.