Employer networks, priming, and discrimination in hiring: An experiment

There is an ongoing debate on whether discrimination exists or not, and, if yes, in which forms. This chapter concentrates only on observed inequalities that are the direct consequences of hiring decisions. A variety of explanations have been provided to try to understand why discrimination tends to persist. A shift of focus toward psychological and structural mechanisms provides valuable insights for sociological investigations on labor market inequalities. The chapter focuses on two particular mechanisms. First, it analyzes whether priming individuals with a positive view on groups involved could decrease discriminatory bias. The second mechanism is more sociological and more in line with the idea of exploring social mechanisms which could increase or decrease discrimination. The chapter discusses certain findings that do not unequivocally support the statistical generalization of the hypothesized mechanisms, which is what one can expect generally in any empirical investigation of social mechanisms.