2025/07/18 by Katherine Coffman, Coffman, Katherine B., Scott Kostyshak +3
Decision Sciences · Social Sciences · #91-05 (Primary) 91B06 #91B39 #91B44 (Secondary) #Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics #Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies #FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN) #Social Power and Status Dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.13798
openalex publication_date 2025/07/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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.