Choosing and Using Information in Evaluation Decisions

TL;DR

This study investigates how the type and amount of information available influence evaluators' decisions, revealing that limited individual data and group stereotypes bias evaluations and affect candidate selection.

Contribution

It demonstrates that evaluators under-acquire individual information and are biased by group-level stereotypes, impacting evaluation fairness and accuracy.

Findings

Evaluators under-acquire individual-level information.

Group-level information biases evaluations.

Biases lead to under-recognition and over-selection of candidates.

Abstract

We use a controlled experiment to study how information acquisition impacts candidate evaluations. We provide evaluators with group-level information on performance and the opportunity to acquire additional, individual-level performance information before making a final evaluation. We find that, on average, evaluators under-acquire individual-level information, leading to more stereotypical evaluations of candidates. Consistent with stereotyping, we find that (irrelevant) group-level comparisons have a significant impact on how candidates are evaluated; group-level comparisons bias initial assessments, responses to information, and final evaluations. This leads to under-recognition of talented candidates from comparatively weaker groups and over-selection of untalented candidates from comparatively stronger groups.