In our meritocratic view of talent management, we like to believe that decisions about people are based on their competencies. As a result, organizations invest considerable effort in reducing biases that unfairly disadvantage certain groups. Yet a recent study by Bastian Jaeger, Gabriele Paolacci, and Johannes Boegershausen, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggests that we pay more attention to some biases than to others.
The authors draw on six primary studies and two supplementary ones, for a total of 3,591 participants, mainly recruited in the United States and the Netherlands. Participants were asked to evaluate the fairness of hypothetical decisions, particularly hiring processes, in which outcomes were systematically biased along three dimensions: gender, race, or physical attractiveness. Decisions favouring men or White candidates were judged to be significantly less fair. In contrast, decisions favouring more attractive individuals were perceived as almost as fair as unbiased decisions.
The proposed explanation goes beyond the usual idea that some biases are seen as more legitimate than others. The authors identify a second, more fundamental mechanism: attention. When participants were asked to describe what stood out about a decision, about 70% spontaneously mentioned gender or race bias, while only 23% referred to attractiveness. In other words, the bias is tolerated partly because it is not detected, and partly because it is seen as more acceptable. When the attractiveness bias is explicitly pointed out, fairness judgments become much more critical, suggesting that the issue is less about endorsement than about a cognitive blind spot.