Detecting Discrimination: A signal detection analysis

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Karl Christoph Klauer
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 503990132

Discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age or sexual orientation. Being able to detect discrimination is a necessary first step in countering it. Yet, there is consensus that the evidence for or against discrimination in specific observed cases is often ambiguous or hidden. The attribution of an outcome to discrimination therefore regularly occurs in a context of considerable uncertainty. Modeling decisions under uncertainty is the goal of signal detection theory (SDT), that has been a classical theoretical framework in the study of attributions to discrimination. SDT’s most important contribution to understanding this judgmental process is to separate and measure two components that contribute to it, sensitivity and response bias. Sensitivity refers to the ability to distinguish between cases with and without cues to discrimination. Response bias refers to the tendency to prefer an attribution to discrimination relative to other attributions.Despite the prominent role that SDT has played in theoretical discussions in the relevant literature, there are no empirical studies that have made possible SDT analyses of observed attributions to discrimination. The purpose of the present proposal is to take a first step towards filling this gap with a new paradigm. SDT analyses promise two contributions: (1) They allow one to characterize empirical findings more precisely as sensitivity effects, response-bias effects, or combinations of both, and (2) they inform theories addressing these findings by clarifying mediational pathways. In the long term, the resulting insights can also contribute to the design of trainings to sensitize observers and decision makers to detect cases of discrimination when they occur.In the project, attributions to gender bias, racial bias, and their intersection are to be investigated by SDT analyses. This allows one to address research questions for which SDT-based theorizing has already sometimes offered conjectures, but for which empirical answers could so far not be given. Examples are the following: Do members of groups that are discriminated against differ in sensitivity and/or response from members of groups that are not victims of discrimination or are even favored by it? What is the role of stereotypical expectations about typical constellations of discrimination in this process and in particular, how are the effects of such expectations mediated – via effects on sensitivity or response bias?

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Jimmy Calanchini