Too old to be a diversity hire: choice bundling shown to increase gender-diverse hiring decisions fails to increase age diversity

Past research has shown that people are more likely to make the decision to hire candidates whose gender would increase group diversity when making multiple hiring choices in a bundle (i.e., when selecting multiple team members simultaneously) compared to making choices in isolation (i.e., when selecting a single team member). However, it is unclear if this bundling effect extends to age diversity and the selection of older candidates, as older workers are often the target of socially acceptable negative stereotypes and bias in recruitment, leaving them unemployed for longer than their younger counterparts. Across five preregistered experiments (total N = 4,096), we tested if the positive effect of bundling on diversity of selections extends to older candidates in hiring decisions. We found evidence of bias against older job candidates in hiring decisions but found inconsistent effects of choice bundling on the selection of older candidates across experiments. An effect of bundling was found in two of five experiments, with no meta-analytic effect found across the five studies. Making older candidates more competitive and introducing a diversity statement aimed at increasing their selection both significantly increased older candidate selections, but failed to activate the bundling effect. We discuss the theoretical implications for choice bundling interventions and for age as a diversity characteristic to support the design of interventions that meet the challenges of an aging workforce.