Ironic effects of suppressing specific and non-specific demography-related thoughts in job candidate evaluations.
Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This present work explored the suppression instructions conveyed during an applicant evaluation process. The following experiment predicted that the participants in the specific suppression condition would evaluate the stereotypical applicants less favorably compared to participants in the other conditions. The participants received one of three suppression instructions: one instructed them to suppress all demographic related thought; one instructed them to suppress specific demographic thoughts; a control group where no instructions were given. All the participants then evaluated female and male Italian, Norwegian and Sami applicants for six professions. Before the evaluation task, half of the participants were made cognitively busy while the other half were not. We expected an ironic effect where the busy participants instructed to suppress specific demographic thoughts to evaluate the counter-stereotypic applicants less favorably than the participants in the other conditions. The results did not support the prediction indicating an absence of the ironic effect. A jobwise analysis was conducted to investigate rating difference in the professions. Again, the results did not yield a significant finding. Thus no ironic effect was found in the experiment meaning that the participants rated the applicants equally in all the conditions.
Author: Aida Babaii
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2130645509