Racial attention deficit

Abstract

Despite efforts toward equity in organizations and institutions, minority members report that they are often ignored, their contributions undervalued. Against this backdrop, we conduct a large-sample, multiyear experimental study to investigate patterns of attention. The findings provide causal evidence of a racial attention deficit: Even when in their best interest, White Americans pay less attention to Black peers. In a baseline study, we assign an incentivized puzzle to participants and examine their willingness to follow the example of their White and Black peers. White participants presume that Black peers are less competent—and fail to learn from their choices. We then test two interventions: Providing information about past accomplishments reduces the disparity in evaluations of Black peers, but the racial attention deficit persists. When Whites can witness the accomplishments of Black peers, rather than being told about them, the racial attention deficit subsides. We suggest that such a deficit can explain racial gaps documented in science, education, health, and law.

Fig. 1.. An overview of the experimental procedure.

Randomized into one of six experimental conditions, (A) a participant, White male or female, is asked to solve a puzzle using information that is known to be ambiguous (and hence, the participant can benefit from observing how others solved the same puzzle). (B) Before deciding, the participant can observe the solutions of two peers, who are identified by their first names, typically Black or White American. Depending on the condition, participants may also receive information about past peer accomplishments or witness the ongoing accomplishments of their peers. (C) The participant submits a solution, and then he or she assesses peers’ skill and provides some demographic information. At the session’s end, (D) the participants who choose correctly receive a 200% bonus. For details, see Materials and Methods and Appendix.

Fig. 2.

The ratio of peers receiving attention (bars, left axis) and the average evaluation of peers (lines, right axis) by race and experimental condition (n = 1449). Error bars show SEs. Levels of statistical significance are reported in Results; box and contour plots appear in Appendix.

Fig. 3.. The puzzle, as shown to the participants.

Details are in Appendix and experimental instructions.