Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores / Dylan Glover, Amanda Pallais, William Pariente.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Glover, Dylan.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Pallais, Amanda.

Pariente, William.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w22786.

NBER working paper series no. w22786

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

Examining the performance of cashiers in a French grocery store chain, we find that manager bias negatively affects minority job performance. In the stores studied, cashiers work with different managers on different days and their schedules are determined quasi-randomly. When minority cashiers, but not majority cashiers, are scheduled to work with managers who are biased (as determined by an Implicit Association Test), they are absent more often, spend less time at work, scan items more slowly, and take more time between customers. Manager bias has consequences for the average performance of minority workers: while on average minority and majority workers perform equivalently, on days where managers are unbiased, minorities perform significantly better than do majority workers. This appears to be because biased managers interact less with minorities, leading minorities to exert less effort.

Notes:

Print version record

October 2016.