IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00516601.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Constructed Criteria. Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination

Author

Listed:
  • Eric Luis Uhlmann

    (Kellogg School of Management - Northwestern University)

  • Geoffrey Cohen

    (Department of Psychology - Yale University [New Haven])

Abstract

This article presents an account of job discrimination according to which people redefine merit in a manner congenial to the idiosyncratic credentials of individual applicants from desired groups. In three studies, participants assigned male and female applicants to gender-stereotypical jobs. However, they did not view male and female applicants as having different strengths and weaknesses. Instead, they redefined the criteria for success at the job as requiring the specific credentials that a candidate of the desired gender happened to have. Commitment to hiring criteria prior to disclosure of the applicant's gender eliminated discrimination, suggesting that bias in the construction of hiring criteria plays a causal role in discrimination.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Luis Uhlmann & Geoffrey Cohen, 2005. "Constructed Criteria. Redefining Merit to Justify Discrimination," Post-Print hal-00516601, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00516601
    DOI: 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.01559.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Devi Vijay & Vivek G. Nair, 2022. "In the Name of Merit: Ethical Violence and Inequality at a Business School," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(2), pages 315-337, August.
    3. Alison T. Wynn & Shelley J. Correll, 2017. "Gendered Perceptions of Cultural and Skill Alignment in Technology Companies," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-28, May.
    4. repec:cup:judgdm:v:4:y:2009:i:6:p:479-491 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Nicole M Lindner & Alexander Graser & Brian A Nosek, 2014. "Age-Based Hiring Discrimination as a Function of Equity Norms and Self-Perceived Objectivity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(1), pages 1-6, January.
    6. William T Self & Gregory Mitchell & Barbara A Mellers & Philip E Tetlock & J Angus D Hildreth, 2015. "Balancing Fairness and Efficiency: The Impact of Identity-Blind and Identity-Conscious Accountability on Applicant Screening," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-17, December.
    7. Punam Raj & Mrinalini Pandey & Asrana Khatoon, 2023. "Breaking the Mold-Analyzing Gender Stereotyping in the Workplace Through Bibliometric and Content Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.
    8. Heilman, Madeline E. & Manzi, Francesca & Caleo, Suzette, 2019. "Updating impressions: The differential effects of new performance information on evaluations of women and men," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 105-121.
    9. Joya Misra & Laurel Smith-Doerr & Nilanjana Dasgupta & Gabriela Weaver & Jennifer Normanly, 2017. "Collaboration and Gender Equity among Academic Scientists," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-22, March.
    10. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo, 2016. "Field Experiments on Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 22014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Ariella S. Kristal & Leonie Nicks & Jamie L. Gloor & Oliver P. Hauser, 2023. "Reducing discrimination against job seekers with and without employment gaps," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(2), pages 211-218, February.
    12. Tyler Saxon, 2021. "Military Subsidization of Human Capital and Gender Stratification in the US Economy," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 53(2), pages 250-265, June.
    13. Raviv Murciano-Goroff, 2022. "Missing Women in Tech: The Labor Market for Highly Skilled Software Engineers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3262-3281, May.
    14. Ben-Amar, Walid & Bujaki, Merridee & McConomy, Bruce & McIlkenny, Philip, 2021. "Gendering merit: How the discourse of merit in diversity disclosures supports the gendered status quo on Canadian corporate boards," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    15. William Darity, 2013. "Confronting those affirmative action grumbles," Chapters, in: Jeannette Wicks-Lim & Robert Pollin (ed.), Capitalism on Trial, chapter 14, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Uhlmann, Eric Luis & Cohen, Geoffrey L., 2007. ""I think it, therefore it's true": Effects of self-perceived objectivity on hiring discrimination," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 207-223, November.
    17. Eric Luis Uhlmann & David A. Pizarro & David Tannenbaum & Peter H. Ditto, 2009. "The motivated use of moral principles," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 4(6), pages 479-491, October.
    18. Moore, Celia & Tenbrunsel, Ann E., 2014. "“Just think about it”? Cognitive complexity and moral choice," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 138-149.
    19. Tierney, Warren & Hardy, Jay H. & Ebersole, Charles R. & Leavitt, Keith & Viganola, Domenico & Clemente, Elena Giulia & Gordon, Michael & Dreber, Anna & Johannesson, Magnus & Pfeiffer, Thomas & Uhlman, 2020. "Creative destruction in science," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 291-309.
    20. Wiltermuth, Scott S., 2011. "Cheating more when the spoils are split," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 157-168, July.
    21. Carolina Castagnetti & Luisa Rosti & Marina Töpfer, 2020. "Discriminate me — If you can! The disappearance of the gender pay gap among public‐contest selected employees in Italy," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(6), pages 1040-1076, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Constructed Criteria; 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:hal:journl:hal-00516601. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.