LECTURE 6: PREJUDICE & DISCRIMINATION

Question 1

What is discrimination?

Answer 1

when an employee, or group, is treated poorly or differentiated adversely based on prohibited grounds

Question 2

Describe the landscape of discrimination in the Canadian workplace.

Answer 2

Canada considered an equal, multicultual society
* Many believe discrimination is a thing of the past
* Workplace discrimination in Canada is illegal

Question 3

What does it mean for a group/individual to be marginalized?

Answer 3

excluded or pushed out of certain spaces

Question 4

What is the corporate pipeline in Canada?

Answer 4

• Entry Level = even
• As you move up the corporate ladder, bar grows for white men
• Alternate explanation: women at disadvantage because they leave when they have children; don’t have the qualifications/education; general career goals (some don’t want to undertake leadership positions)

Question 5

Why do group differences exist? How do we explain inequalities?

Answer 5

Look at internal & external attributions:

Internal differences in:
- effort
- ability
- credentials
- performance
- preferences & choice

External differences in:
- bias/discrimination
- barriers & disadvantage
- favouritism & nepotism
- privilege
- socialization

Internal = differences in merit
External = discrimination

Question 6

How can we determine if group differences are a result of discrimination?

Answer 6

One method - ask marginalized group members & compare their experiences to other groups

e.g.
* Women 4% more likely to experience discrimination than men
* visible minorities 2-2.5 x more likely to experience discrimination
* Disabled 5x more likely to experience discrimination than those w/o

Question 7

Explain how Canadian work experiences are unequal.

Answer 7

Large wage gap in terms of race for black & south-east-asian groups (compared to white group)

• Koreans, Chinese, South Asians, West Asians, Japanese, Arabs and Filipinos, had levels of education well above the national average
• still have wage gap

Question 8

Do marginalized groups falsely perceive discrimination? How can obtain objective evidence?

Answer 8

• Maybe people belonging to marginalized groups are living in fear
• Discrimination is not always 100% clear
• best way to determine is to obtain objective evidence through experiments

Question 9

Objective Evidence of Discrimination: Audit Studies

Answer 9

STUDY:
- Studied in Canadian context
- sent out resumes to real job posting using anglo sounding names & asian sounding names

Findings:
Asians called 32.6% less than white applicants

Question 10

Objective Evidence of Discrimination: Meta-analysis

Answer 10

STUDY:
looked at the likelihood of calls vs non-marginalized groups

FINDINGS:
- marginalized groups received less call-backs in hiring

• effect of gender depends on the type of job
  E.g. Male dominated jobs – discrimination against women; female dominated jobs discrimination against men

Question 11

Objective Evidence of Discrimination: Discrimination against women

Answer 11

STUDY:
- meta analysis of experiments in realms of hiring, promotion, compensation, etc.

FINDINGS:
* Pro-female bias found for hiring for female dominated jobs – e.g. nursing/education jobs operate against men

• gender discrimination found for male-dominated jobs & male raters

Question 12

Do discrimination effects occur in the workplace?

Answer 12

• Difficult to control experiments, know your coworkers group identities (for most part), can’t randomly assign people to condition
• discrimination evident in performance evaluations
• male professor received higher teaching evaluations

Question 13

What are barriers to detecting discrimination?

Answer 13

1. Discrimination can be subtle, & ambiguous
2. Fundamental attribution error
3. innate desire to see the world as just w/ fair systems

Question 14

What is fundamental attribution error?

Answer 14

judgements can be based on internal or external factors; tend to attribute to internal factors

Internal - characteristics of the person

External - characteristics of the situation or context

• Marginalized groups also participate in FAE

Question 15

What is the system justification theory?

Answer 15

• People, especially marginalized groups are motivated to legitimize the status quo, even when it is unfair
• Can stem from a need for order and stability
• Can stem from passive ease of supporting existing systems vs. hard work, costs of fighting status quo
• When disadvantaged by such a system = cognitive dissonance
• know something is unfair & we dont do anything about it
• marginalized groups experience the most dissonance
• engage in system justification (e.g. i did bad on the exam because i didnt work hard enough; dont account for teacher)
• Can results in reduced moral outrage about inequalities, injustices
• Can result in cultural stereotypes that justify status quo

Question 16

Explain the idea of under-attributing discrimination.

Answer 16

People believe that they are discriminated against less than they believe that their group is discriminated against

• People need more evidence than seems reasonable that poor treatment or outcome is due to group status before they label it as discrimination
• 90% mark = identification of discrimination
• People appear to be loath to see themselves as victims of discrimination
• robs them of control/efficacy
• better to deny problem exists
• accepting of their position as the ‘other’

Question 17

What are 2 types of discrimination?

Answer 17

Personal - interpersonal treatment (e.g., harassment, rejection, insults, incivility)

Systemic- institutional policies, procedures & practices that determine outcomes

• Both forms can be subtle or blatant:
• Blatant = clear, group/identity-based bias
• Subtle = unclear, ambiguous

Question 18

What factors lead to discrimination?

Answer 18

Prejudice -overall evaluation towards an out-group (negative)

based on beliefs (persona stereotypes), feelings, memories (past behaviours)

Cultural Stereotypes - stereotypes when all members of a group are categorized as having the same characteristics

Implicit bias (weaker association

context

Question 19

What are two predictors of explicit prejudice?

Answer 19

• Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) = the degree to which people oppose equality and believe that society should be hierarchically structured, with some groups having higher status than others
• Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) has three components: (a) submission or a tendency to defer to those considered to be legitimate authority figures, (b) authoritarian aggression (i.e., holding punitive attitudes toward those labeled wrongdoers by authorities), and (c) conventionalism or adherence to the norms that authorities establish

Question 20

What is the difference between implicit & explicit bias?

Answer 20

EXPLICIT:
*Deliberately activated
* Aware of effects on
behaviour
* Assessed with self-
report surveys
* Controlled, social
desirability
* Consciously held

IMPLICIT:
* Automatically
activated
* Unaware of effects
on behaviour
* Assessed with
response time tasks
* Uncontrollable
* Unconscious?

Question 21

What are the consequences of attributions to implicit bias?

Answer 21

• Relation between implicit bias and discrimination is weak
• Training to reduce implicit bias ineffective
• Attributions to implicit bias gets people off the hook

Question 22

What are the consequences of bias for targets?

Answer 22

• greater job stress
  -negative affect: anger, depression
• low job satisfaction & org commitment
• worse mental & physical health
• poor cognitive performance

Question 23

How do targets react to bias?

Answer 23

1. Some may experience bias & decide to challenge - If they think change is possible: work harder, prove themselves to others, change other minds, engage in collective change
   * E.g., Teacher thinks in stupid – prove myself by doing extra work & participating more
2. Some may experience bias & decide to withdraw - skip class, make herself invisible (sit in the back, stop raising hand)

Question 24

T/F: people who score high on an explicit measure of prejudice toward one group, such as visible minorities (or people of colour), also tend to score higher in prejudice toward other groups such as gays, women, and the poor

Answer 24

TRUE: also true of implicit measures of prejudice

Question 25

T/F: transgender individuals are significantly more likely to experience barriers and disadvantage at every stage of the employment process

Answer 25

TRUE

• higher unemployment rates for transgender individuals (12% transmen and 14% transwomen), relative to the overall U.S. population (6% to 8.9% during the same period).
• 18% of transgender Ontarians had been turned down for a job because they were transgender.
• Another 32% believed that being transgender played a role in not being hired.

Question 26

According to Waite, what are the experiences of minority groups working in government agents?

Answer 26

Visible minority and Indigenous federal employees are roughly two times more likely than white/non-Indigenous employees to have experienced employment discrimination in the last two years.

Those with disabilities are more than four and a half times more likely to report employment discrimination while working for the federal government