When Performance Trumps Gender Bias: Joint vs. Separate Evaluation

We examine a new intervention to overcome gender biases in hiring, promotion, and job assignments: an “evaluation nudge,” in which people are evaluated jointly rather than separately regarding their future performance. Evaluators are more likely to focus on individual performance in joint than in separate evaluation and on group stereotypes in separate than in joint evaluation, making joint evaluation the money-maximizing evaluation procedure. Our findings are compatible with a behavioral model of information processing and with the System 1/System 2 distinction in behavioral decision research where people have two distinct modes of thinking that are activated under certain conditions. JEL: C91; D03 Total Word Count: 8,236 *We thank Pinar Dogan, Chris Muris, Farzad Saidi, Richard Zeckhauser, and the participants of seminars at Harvard University, Tilburg University, the University of California Berkeley, the MOVE conference in Barcelona, and the MBEES conference in Maastricht for many helpful comments, and Sara Steinmetz for her research assistance. Financial support from the Women and Public Policy Program and the Women’s Economic Opportunity Initiative of ExxonMobil are gratefully acknowledged. Corresponding author: Iris Bohnet, Harvard Kennedy School, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; phone: 617 495 5605; [email protected]