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ABSTRACT The effects of applicant race and applicant quality on recall errors and on decision making in the employment interview were examined. Eighty-eight white undergraduates in the mid-Western United States reviewed paper credentials and then interviewed a high or low quality black or white applicant in a controlled experimental setting. Results showed that, although the interviewers hired the black and white applicants in equal proportion, one week later they recalled the answers to the interview questions given by the black applicants as having been significantly less intelligent then those of whites - when in fact the actual interview content in the two race conditions was identical. Presumably, the participants of this study had negative schemas towards blacks that they were able to suppress when making hiring decisions, but that were revealed when unobtrusive measures were used.
KEYWORDS attitudes * employment selection * equal employment opportunity * personnel * race * schema theory
In the United States, Congress enacted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to enforce the doctrine of equal employment opportunity. Subsequent United States Supreme Court rulings such as Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) have supported the Title VII legislation; ruling that EEOC enforcement agencies could prosecute companies if the consequences of their employment practices were discriminatory, even if they did not intend them to be so. Title VII, and the judiciary, have forced managers in companies to comply with the order to treat minorities equally when hiring. Although legislation may compel equal treatment when hiring job candidates, it is less clear if prejudicial attitudes towards minorities have changed in tandem. The purpose of the current study is to investigate if employment interviewers treat minority and majority candidates equally, yet hold prejudicial attitudes against minorities.
Prejudice is a bias or prejudgement, favourable or unfavourable, that has no factual basis (Allport, 1958). Prejudice becomes discrimination when it translates into the unequal treatment of individuals who are the object of the prejudicial attitudes. The issue of treating candidates equally to comply with external sanctions such as government regulations or social pressures, while simultaneously maintaining prejudicial attitudes, carries important practical implications because suppressed attitudes may manifest themselves in other domains where sanctions for failing to comply do not yet exist, or are less...