When bias hurts profits
Researchers have long known that bias can have an impact on hiring, but a new Harvard study suggests that it may also affect workplace performance. Co-authored by Amanda Pallais, the Paul Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy and Social Studies, the study, which is based on data collected from a French grocery store chain, found that minority workers were far less efficient in a handful of important metrics when working with biased managers. That drop in performance, Pallais and co-authors Dylan Glover and William Pariente say, can create a self-fulfilling prophecy among bosses biased against minorities. Since such managers believe that minority workers are worse employees, that bias can result in poorer performance by the affected minorities, and so managers assure themselves that the minority workers are worse employees. “We were able to use metrics — how fast cashiers scan items, how much time they spend between customers, number of absences — to...