Awareness Reduces Racial Bias

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 7945 February 2014 ABSTRACT Awareness Reduces Racial BiasCan raising awareness of racial bias subsequently reduce that bias? We address this question by exploiting the widespread media attention highlighting racial bias among professional basketball referees that occurred in May 2007 following the release of an academic study. Using new data, we confirm that racial bias persisted in the years after the study's original sample, but prior to the media coverage. Subsequent to the media coverage though, the bias completely disappeared. We examine potential mechanisms that may have produced this result and find that the most likely explanation is that upon becoming aware of their biases, individual referees changed their decision-making process. These results suggest that raising awareness of even subtle forms of bias can bring about meaningful change.JEL Classification: J15, J7, L83, K31

Persuaded Under Pressure: Evidence From the National Football League

“…However, this is difficult in sport given the public nature in which all participants, in particular the referees, operate. Given that referees have shown a willingness to adapt their behavior when made aware of their biases (Pope, Price, and Wolfers ), one solution may simply be to make the league aware of this behavior. Ultimately, however, unless team personnel are removed from direct contact with the run of play, it may be impossible to remove a sideline bias from the NFL.…”

“…Other social pressures on referees, including whether or not the contest is on television (Lane et al ), and the choice to make fewer calls at game's end so as to avoid being part of a game's narrative (Moskowitz and Wertheim ; Snyder and Lopez ), have also been suggested. And although their behavior is susceptible to outside factors, the monitoring of referees has been shown to reduce bias (Parsons et al ; Pope, Price, and Wolfers ).…”

Preaching to the Choir: Americans Prefer Communicating to Copartisan Elected Officials

“…Across many settings, one of the best ways to address biases in behavior and decision making is to make individuals aware of the biases in their behavior (e.g., Monteith ). For example, sports referees who exhibited racial bias when allocating points and fouls adjusted their behavior once made aware of it (Pope, Price, and Wolfers ). Likewise, making politicians aware that the balance of communication they receive from constituents is skewed by partisanship might help reduce their misperceptions of their constituents’ views and encourage moderation, to the extent politicians wish to do so (Butler and Nickerson ) .…”

Muslims in France: Identifying a Discriminatory Equilibrium

“…The dummy (FFF → SM) is equal to 1 if player 1 is FFF and player 2 is SM and to 0 otherwise. 43 The dummy (SM → All) is equal to 1 if player 1 is That SM senders are significantly less generous to all game partners is shown on Table 10. Columns 1, 3, 5 and 7 present OLS estimates from four model specifications of Equation (3), restricting our attention to the amount sent in the simultaneous trust game.…”