(Not) Getting What You Deserve: How Misrecognized Evaluators Reproduce Misrecognition in Peer Evaluations

American Sociological Review · 2025-03-23 · 2 citations

In most evaluation systems—such as those governing the allocation of prestigious awards—the evaluator’s primary task is to reward the highest quality candidates. However, these systems are imperfect; top performers may not be acknowledged and thus be underrecognized, and low performers may receive unwarranted recognition and thus be overrecognized. An important feature of many evaluation systems is that people alternate between being candidates and being evaluators. How does experiencing misrecognition as a candidate affect how people subsequently evaluate others? We develop novel theory that underrecognition and overrecognition lead people to reproduce those experiences when they are evaluators. Across three studies—a quasi-natural experiment and two preregistered, multistage experiments, we find that underrecognized evaluators are less likely to grant recognition to others—even to the highest-performing candidates. Conversely, overrecognized evaluators are more likely to grant rewards to others—even to the lowest-performing candidates. Whereas underrecognized evaluator behavior is driven by individuals’ perceptions that their experience was unfair, overrecognized evaluator behavior is driven by the informational cues people glean on how to evaluate others. Thus, in evaluation processes where people oscillate between being the evaluated and being the evaluator, we show how and why seemingly innocuous initial inefficiencies are reproduced in subsequent evaluations.

The (re)production of inequality in evaluations: A unifying framework outlining the drivers of gender and racial differences in evaluative outcomes

Research in Organizational Behavior · 2024-11-22 · 11 citations

Organizational Claims Can Promote the Self-Selection of Inclusive Job Seekers

Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

Organizations that facilitate inclusion more effectively attract and retain a diverse workforce; however, finding empirically backed strategies for promoting inclusive behavior has been challenging. Here, we suggest a solution for creating more inclusive organizations: promoting the self-selection of inclusive workers. Specifically, we examine whether organizational claims about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) attract more inclusive job seekers. In two preregistered experiments (N = 1,212), we examined how participants’ tendency to behave inclusively (as rated by long-term workgroup members) predicted their interest in (Experiment 1) and decision to work for (Experiment 2) organizations demonstrating varying degrees of commitment to DEI. We find that the most inclusive job seekers self-select into—and the least inclusive self-exclude from—organizations making resource-backed claims that express a deep commitment to DEI. Our findings highlight that organizational claims induce applicant sorting based on their inclusivity and offer a practical tool for promoting inclusivity in organizations.

Looking Beyond the Numbers: New Approaches to Understanding Organizational Inequality and Exclusion

Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

In recent decades, organizations big and small, public and private, and across numerous industries have made efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion. At the same time, researchers have documented the many ways in which organizations continue to be fundamentally unequal in their treatment of members from historically underrepresented groups, including women and racial and ethnic minorities. There is a growing consensus among researchers that simply increasing the numbers of members from historically underrepresented groups in organizations (achieving “representational diversity”) will ultimately be insufficient to fundamentally improve equity and inclusion within organizations. This symposium brings together leading scholars of organizational inequality who span micro and macro perspectives to interrogate why simply “adding diversity and stirring” will not be enough to address lasting concerns of organizational equity and inclusion. Specifically, the four papers in this symposium utilize multiple complementary methodologies—ranging from natural language processing of historical texts to attitudinal surveys to video experiments—to shed new light on the mechanisms that continue to uphold inequalities even in the face of changing numeric representation of minoritized groups. The Stability of Stigma: Testing Mechanisms of Negative Stereotype Persistence Across 100 Years Author: Tessa Charlesworth; Northwestern Kellogg School of Management Author: Mark HATZENBUEHLER; Harvard U. Defending White Hegemonic Masculinity: A Test of the Projective Identification Hypothesis Author: Robin J. Ely; Harvard Business School Author: Sanaz Mobasseri; Boston U. Questrom School of Business Author: Ivuoma Ngozi Onyeador; - Demographic Similarity, Protective Socialization: Paradox of Punishment in Racialized Organizations Author: Jayanti Owens; Yale School of Management Race and Evaluations of Misconduct in Organizations Author: Mabel Abraham; Columbia Business School Author: Erica Bailey; Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

Paying & Punishing it Forward: Misrecognized Evaluators Reproduce Unmeritocratic Peer Evaluations

Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024 · 1 citations

• Computer Science
• Computer Science
• Environmental science

In any evaluation system, the evaluator's purpose is to grant recognition or status to the highest quality candidates. However, these systems are imperfect; top performers may not be recognized and thus be underrecognized, and low performers may receive unwarranted recognition and be overrecognized. An important feature of many evaluation systems is that people alternate between being candidates and being evaluators. We examine how experiencing misrecognition as a candidate affects how people subsequently evaluate others within such systems. Building on theories of evaluations, role fulfillment, and equity, we argue that being underrecognized or overrecognized as candidates will affect how individuals later evaluate others. Across three studies—a natural field experiment with investment professionals, and two preregistered, multistage experiments, we find that underrecognized evaluators are less likely to grant rewards—even to the highest performing candidates—than similarly performing but correctly recognized evaluators. In contrast, overrecognized evaluators are more likely to grant recognition—even to the lowest performing candidates—than similarly performing but correctly recognized evaluators. Importantly, we provide evidence that underrecognized evaluator behavior is explained by perceptions that their experience was unfair while overrecognized evaluator behavior is shaped by role fulfillment concerns. Thus, in evaluation processes where people oscillate between the evaluated and the evaluator, we show how and why seemingly innocuous initial inefficiencies are reproduced.

Gender Differences in Climbing up the Ladder: Why Experience Closes the Ambition Gender Gap

Psychological Science · 2024 · 7 citations

• Political Science
• Psychology
• Social psychology

Women are unequally represented in the highest positions in society. Beyond discrimination and bias, women are missing from the top because they are less likely to pursue high-ranking opportunities. We propose that experience is a critical moderator of gender differences in pursuing leadership opportunities, with low-experience women being particularly unlikely to seek higher level positions. We used field analyses of 96 years of U.S. senator and governor elections to examine male and female politicians' propensity to run for higher political offices. As predicted, among those with little political experience, women were less likely than men to run for higher office, but experience closed this gender gap. A preregistered experiment among U.S.-based adults replicated the field findings and revealed that it was the increased self-confidence of experienced women that reduced the gender gap. The findings suggest experience, and the self-confidence that comes with it, is one lever for closing the gender gap in seeking to climb professional hierarchies.

Placement & Evaluation S2

Open MIND · 2023-01-01

Placement & Evaluation – (experiment without performance information)

New Approaches to Understanding Organizational Networks, Inequality, and Inclusion

Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

This symposium showcases a set of papers that deepen our understanding of the dynamic relationship between intra-organizational networks and race, ethnicity, and gender-based inequalities in workplace experiences and attainment. It brings together leading scholars to shed light on novel theoretical mechanisms, processes, and frameworks of interest to inequality, social networks, and DEI scholars. The first two papers focus on intra-organizational network inequalities, unpacking the conditions under which race, ethnicity, and gender differences in social networks emerge and persist. The latter two papers focus on unpacking the construct of inclusion by offering novel theoretical frameworks of inclusion and re-conceptualizing it as a structural, network-based phenomenon. Collectively, the four papers presented in this symposium offer novel empirical and theoretical mechanisms to explain differences in intra-organizational network characteristics, attainment, and perceptions and behaviors of inclusion. These papers employ a variety of research methods, ranging from qualitative interviews, observational data, surveys, to field interventions. In line with the AOM 2023 theme, Putting the Worker Front and Center, the four papers in this symposium unilaterally zoom in on the workers, especially workers who are members of disadvantaged groups in organizations and society, and seek to identify new ways in which social networks can be used to mitigate race and gender-based inequalities in work experience and attainment. Gendered and Racialized Effects of New Employees’ Initial Ties on Organizational Integration Author: Mabel Abraham; Columbia Business School Author: Sanaz Mobasseri; Boston U. Questrom School of Business Author: Elizabeth Linos; U. of California, Berkeley Author: Dawn Graham; Boston U. Differential Network Resources and Returns for Men and Women Author: Brian Silverman; U. of Toronto Author: Bill McEvily; U. of Toronto Author: Paola Criscuolo; Imperial College London Author: Andrew Cohen; U. of Denver Author: Martine Haas; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania A Structural Framework of Inclusion at Work Author: Lara Yang; Stanford Graduate School of Business Author: Francesca Gino; Harvard U. Author: Paul Isaac Green; U. of Texas at Austin Author: Sameer B. Srivastava; U. of California, Berkeley A Network Perspective on Inclusion: A Research Agenda Author: Adam M. Kleinbaum; Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business

The Implications of Gendered Expectations for Worker Outcomes

Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

Whereas feminine stereotypes center on communal characteristics such as helpfulness and cooperativeness, male stereotypes center on agentic characteristics including competence and assertiveness (Abele, 2003; Fiske & Stevens, 1993). Broad beliefs and specific stereotypes about gender do more than just describe common gender differences in behavior, they also prescribe how men and women ought to behave (Gorman, 2005; Heilman, 1983; Perry, Davis-Blake, & Kulik, 1994). Such prescriptions may lead to gender inequality by shaping expectations in two distinct ways. First, evaluators assessing both men and women are apt to interpret behaviors demonstrated by male and female candidates based on the consistency of these behaviors vis-à-vis dominant gendered beliefs (e.g., Correll, Weisshaar, Wynn, & Wehner, 2020). Second, gendered beliefs shape people’s understanding about how others expect them to behave, thus, at times, leading individuals to conform to what they see as the desired, or expected, behaviors based on their gender (e.g., Correll et al., 2017). The aim of this symposium is to deepen and expand our understanding of how such gendered beliefs and expectations both shape the how men and women are evaluated by others and lead men and women to engage differently, specifically in ways that often disadvantage women. This symposium brings together economic sociologists, strategic management scholars, and organizational behavior scholars using a wide range of methods (e.g., observational, natural language processing, experimental) to uncover the processes leading to gender inequalities in the workplace. In line with the annual meeting theme, Putting the Worker Front and Center, each of the papers in this symposium focuses on worker behavior and the ways these behaviors can lead to gender differences in outcomes. Furthermore, the papers in this symposium examine these gender dynamics both at the hiring interface and over time among existing employees within organizations, thus offering insights about worker experiences with inequality at numerous critical moments for organizations seeking to create equitable workplaces. Differential Effects of Transparency: How Transparency Shapes Male and Female Evaluative Behavior Author: Mabel Abraham; Columbia Business School Author: Brittany Bond; Cornell U. Catching Negativity: Gender and the Dynamics of Emotional Contagion in Email Author: Sanaz Mobasseri; Boston U. Questrom School of Business Gender Differences in Career Advancement When Re-entering the Workforce After Entrepreneurship Author: Tristan L. Botelho; Yale School of Management Author: Daniel Fehder; USC Marshall School of Business Author: Milan Miric; U. of Southern California -Marshall School of Business The Intersectional Implications of the Gender Composition of Applicant Pools Author: Claire Daviss; Stanford U.

I Meant What I Said, and I Said What I Meant?: Organizational Rhetoric Around Social Justice Issues

Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022-07-06

From systematic racism to climate change, institutions in contemporary American society are increasingly expected to wake up to and take a stance on major social and political issues that challenge our societal well-being. Yet such communicative efforts are not always met with unanimous positive reactions. The public, or some social groups, may question the underlying motivation for such efforts, seeing them as nothing more than political performance (Anderson & McClain, 2020). Certain narratives may backfire, too, especially when the effort is described as intending to benefit the bottom line rather than supporting social justice (Carlos & Lewis, 2018; Kim, 2014). Finally, despite the unprecedented wave of public support for BLM in summer 2020, many people were hesitant to rejoice over the “victory” because promises may never become progresses, especially considering that the past sixty years have witnessed a decrease, rather than an increase, in racial equity despite all the talking (e.g., a greater racial wealth gap; Miller, 2011, Shapiro, Meschede & Osoro, 2013). Stating an organization’s intention to contribute to a better, more equitable society is a must, but a deep understanding on how organizations should communicate such intentions, and how their words influence the public’s perception is still lacking. In response to the need for more rigorous and systematic research on how organizations communicate their intention to engage in social justice and how the public responds, this symposium has curated five interrelated empirical papers on this timely topic. Embracing a mixed method approach, these papers have combined the strength of archival analysis with experimental methods to showcase various aspects of an organizations’ decisions around rhetoric and communication style, how these decisions are perceived, and why certain strategies are perceived more favorably than others. Predicting People’s Perceptions of Organizational Statements Following George Floyd's Death Presenter: Xuan Zhao; Stanford U. Presenter: Rachel Song; U. of Washington Presenter: MarYam Hamedani; Stanford U. Presenter: Amrita Maitreyi; Stanford U. Presenter: Clarissa Gutierrez; Stanford U. Presenter: Hazel Markus; Stanford U. Presenter: Jennifer Eberhardt; Stanford U. Perceptions of Organizational DEI Messages that Leverage Moral Claims and Instrumental Claims Presenter: Preeti Vani; Stanford Graduate School of Business Presenter: Benoit Monin; Stanford Graduate School of Business Pain & Punishment: How University Diversity Rationales Affect Responses to Interracial Conflicts Presenter: Jordan Starck; Stanford U. Presenter: Stacey Sinclair; Princeton U. The Efficacy of Leader Rhetoric to Promote Inclusion During Periods of Intergroup Conflict Presenter: McKenzie Preston; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Arianna M. Beetz; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Andrew Carton; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania “But Are They Walking the Talk?”:How People Make Sense of Diversity Communications and Demographics Presenter: James T. Carter; Columbia Business School Presenter: Mabel Abraham; Columbia Business School