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Home > News & Events > Events Calendar > Temporal Distance and Discrimination: An Audit Study in Academia
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emailThursday, October 18, 2012
Temporal Distance and Discrimination: An Audit Study in Academia
Modupe Akinola, Assistant Professor of Management at
Columbia Business School
Through a field experiment set in academia (with a sample of 6,548
professors), our study found that decisions about distant-future
events were more likely to generate discrimination against women
and minorities (relative to Caucasian males) than were decisions
about near-future events. In this study, faculty members received
e-mails from fictional prospective doctoral students seeking to
schedule a meeting either that day or in 1 week; students’ names
signaled their race (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Indian,
or Chinese) and gender. When the requests were to meet in 1 week,
Caucasian males were granted access to faculty members 26% more
often than were women and minorities; also, compared with women and
minorities, Caucasian males received more and faster responses.
However, these patterns were essentially eliminated when
prospective students requested a meeting that same day. In this
session, we will discuss how the study’s identification of a
temporal discrimination effect is consistent with the predictions
of construal-level theory and implies that subtle contextual shifts
can alter patterns of race- and gender-based discrimination.
Lunch will be provided.
An RSVP is not required as this is an open event.
- Location:WAPPP Cason Seminar Room, Taubman Building, Room 102
- Date:Thursday, October 18, 2012
-
Time:11:40 AM
