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Record W3112405903 · doi:10.1177/0003122420969399

Statistical Discrimination and the Rationalization of Stereotypes

2020· article· en· W3112405903 on OpenAlexafffund
András Tilcsik

Bibliographic record

VenueAmerican Sociological Review · 2020
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicNames, Identity, and Discrimination Research
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
FundersMcGill UniversityUniversity of TorontoYork UniversityStyrelsen för Internationellt Utvecklingssamarbete
KeywordsRationalization (economics)Statistical discriminationRationalityPsychologySocial psychologyReading (process)Employment discriminationCognitive psychologyEpistemologyEconomicsPolitical science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The theory of statistical discrimination is a dominant social scientific framework for understanding discrimination in labor markets. To date, the literature has treated this theory as a model that merely explains employer behavior. This article contends that the idea of statistical discrimination, rather than simply providing an explanation, can lead people to view social stereotyping as useful and acceptable and thus help rationalize and justify discriminatory decisions. A preregistered survey experiment with more than 2,000 participants who had managerial experience shows that exposure to statistical discrimination theory strengthened people’s belief in the accuracy of stereotypes, their acceptance of stereotyping, and the extent to which they engaged in gender discrimination in a hiring simulation. Reading a critical commentary on the theory mitigated these effects. These findings imply that theories of discrimination, and the language associated with them, can rationalize—or challenge the rationality of—stereotypes and discrimination and, as a result, shape the attitudes and actions of decision-makers in labor markets.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.023
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.034
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.023
Threshold uncertainty score0.123

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0230.034
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0020.028
Scholarly communication0.0040.004
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0030.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.084
GPT teacher head0.420
Teacher spread0.336 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations117
Published2020
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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Same venueAmerican Sociological ReviewSame topicNames, Identity, and Discrimination ResearchFrench-language works237,207