Choosing and Using Information in Evaluation Decisions with Katherine Coffman

This seminar explores how information acquisition decisions impact candidate evaluations. In the researchers' experiment, evaluators receive group-level information on performance and the opportunity to acquire additional, individual-level performance information before making a final evaluation. The results show that, on average, evaluators under-acquire individual-level information, leading to more stereotypical evaluations of candidates. Consistent with stereotyping, (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.

Katherine Coffman is the Piramal Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiations, Organizations & Markets unit at Harvard Business School. Before joining HBS, she was an assistant professor of economics at The Ohio State University. In her research, Professor Coffman uses experimental methods to study individual, team, and managerial decision making, with a focus on the role of gender stereotypes in shaping beliefs. Her work has been published in Management Science, the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Review of Economic Studies. She is an associate editor of Management Science and the Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics. Professor Coffman holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and a BA in mathematics and economics from Williams College.

This virtual seminar is part of WAPPP’s weekly spring seminar series Fairness & Meritocracy at Work led by WAPPP co-director Iris Bohnet. Attendance is open to all.