Job Discrimination: The Use of Justification
(2009) XIVth European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology — Location: Santiago de Compostela - Spain (13.May.2009)
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- High status group members discriminate against racial outgroup members when they can justify their behaviours and their decision (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1998). By the justification process, people can both protect their egalitarian values and their nonprejudiced self-image (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003). Prior research has shown the use of justification when foreign applicants had ambiguous qualifications (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000) or when they were considered as fitting little with the job or with the organization (Esses & al., 2006). But the justification processes remain unclear: what kind of information people use to justify dismiss of an outgroup applicant? We addressed this particular question by asking participants to evaluate both ingroup members (Belgians) and outgroup members (North-Africans) and assume that participants will discriminate against the outgroup members as soon they can use an information, whatever neutral it is. This neutral information was the applicant’s spare-time activity, either connected to national politics or to international politics. Control participants did not receive any information about spare-time activity. We measured discrimination, job fit (i.e. the extent to which applicant’s skills and motivation fit a specific job), organization fit (i.e. the extent to which applicants match the broader attributes of the organization) and spare-time fit (i.e. the extent to which the applicants’ hobby is likely to influence the perception of the participants). Results have shown that participants discriminate against North-Africans in interracial hiring situations as soon as they can justify their greater hiring of Belgian applicants and their greater rejection of north-African applicants through the use of neutral information.. But when no information is provided at all, then participants cannot justify their choice in other factor than race and therefore they don’t not discriminate. Conclusions about the way people use information to justify their hiring or their dismissing and the nature of justifications are drawn.
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Delroisse, S., Herman, G., & Yzerbyt, V. (2009). Job Discrimination: The Use of Justification. XIVth European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology, Santiago de Compostela - Spain. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/230513