Temporal Distance and Discrimination: An Audit Study in Acade

Through a field experiment set in academia (with a sample of 6,548 professors), we found that decisions about distant future events were more likely to generate discrimination against women and minorities (relative to Caucasian males) than were decisions about near-future events. In our study, faculty members received e-mails from fictional prospective doctoral students seeking to schedule a meeting either that day or in I week; students' names signaled their race (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Indian, or Chinese) and gender. When the requests were to meet in I week, Caucasian males were granted access to faculty members 26% more often than were women and minorities; also, compared with women and minorities, Caucasian males received more and faster responses. However, these patterns were essentially eliminated when prospective students requested a meeting that same day. Our identification of a temporal discrimination effect is consistent with the predictions of construal-level theory and implies that subtle contextual shifts can alter patterns of race- and gender based discrimination.

Despite the protections guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act, women and minorities continue to experience inequity in domains such as employment, housing, and elementary and secondary education (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004; Farkas, 2003; Massey & Lundy, 2001). Past research has demonstrated that judgments about upcoming events are heavily influenced by temporal distance, or how far in the future an event will occur (Trope & Liberman, 2003,2010). We examined whether temporal distance increased race- and gender-based bias in university faculty members' decisions about whether to grant students access to valued opportunities.

Temporal distance is one of several types of psychological distance that have been shown to alter individuals' construals of future events (Trope & Liberman, 2003, 2010). 0). Immediate events trigger concrete construals, which are characterized by an emphasis on details. Concrete construals focus decision makers' attention on how an event will occur (e.g., logistics) and on evaluating its feasibility. In contrast, distant events trigger abstract construals, which are characterized by coarse generalizations. Abstract construals focus decision makers' attention on why an event should occur and on its personal desirability (Liberman & Trope, 1998; Trope & Liberman,2003). For example, an individual deciding whether to schedule an appointment in the next several hours may consider if,where, and when he or she can do it, whereas an hereas an individual deciding whether to schedule an appointment in the distant future may consider whether doing so would be worthwhile, valuable, or desirable. Recent laboratory studies have demonstrated that abstract construals, relative to concrete construals, increase decision makers' reliance on stereotypes (McCrea, Wieber, & Myers2012). The application of such generalizations to judgments of individuals may increase bias against minorities and women and may also increase favoritism toward Caucasian men (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007; Schwab, 1986), particularly when these individuals' qualifications are ambiguous. Activating the negative stereotypes associated with a group is likely to cause perceivers to view members of that group as less desirable. We propose a temporal discrimination effect whereby increasing temporal distance amplifies decision makers' focus on personal-desirability concerns (i.e., "Is doing it worthwhile?") and stereotypes, thus generating discrimination against women and minorities.

To select study participants, we identified all 6,300 doctoral programs across all academic disciplines at the top 260 U.S. universities (U.S. News & World Report, 2010); approximately 200,000 faculty members were affiliated with these programs. (For details on selection of participants and consent, see Experimental Design in the Supplemental Material.)We then selected one to two faculty members from each doctoral program's Web site, for a total of 6,548 professors of known race, academic rank, and gender. We oversampled minority faculty members to achieve sufficient statistical power for investigating how they responded to students of their own race. Following past research (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004), we selected names to signal prospective students' race (Caucasian, African American, Hispanic, Indian, or Chinese) and gender (two names for each gender of each race, for a total of 711 20 names; for details about our analysis confirming the similarity between the two names for each gender of each race, see Analysis in the Supplemental Material). An independent sample (distinct from the sample in our main experiment) accurately identified the race and gender signaled by each name (average accuracy of 97% for race and 98% for gender). Each participant in our main experiment received one e-mail in which a prospective student requested a 10-min meeting to discuss research opportunities on a Monday during the academic year. (To read the template for e-mails sent in each condition, see Experimental Design in the Supplemental Material.) All messages were sent at 8:00 a.m. and were identical except for two randomized elements: (a) the sender's race and gender and (b) whether the requested meeting was "any time today" (now condition) or "anytime next Monday" (later condition)our manipulation of temporal distance. Data collection and analysis were conducted by the first two authors with the approval of the institutional review boards of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.

Results Emergence of the temporal discrimination effect As hypothesized, minorities and women experienced more discrimination when seeking access to faculty in the distant future than when seeking access to faculty in the near future. A sample-weighted analysis1 of the behavior of all participants in our study revealed that faculty members in the now condition responded at similar rates to Caucasian males (69%) and to minority and female students (67%), logit ^(l, N = 3,241) = 0.81,p = .368. However, in the later condition, faculty members responded at a significantly higher rate to Caucasian males (74%) than to other students (64%), logit ^(1, N = 3,307) = 12.93, p < .001 (Fig. la). Our analysis of meeting-acceptance rates revealed a similar pattern: In the now condition, faculty members agreed to meet with Caucasian males (36%) and minority and female students (37%) at similar rates, logit 1,N = 3,241) = 0.03, p - .857; however, in the later condition, Caucasian males (48%) were granted significantly more meetings than other students were (38%), logit ^(1, N = 3,307) =12.40,/; < .001 (Fig. lb). In the later condition, participants also responded more quickly to Caucasian males than to other students, whereas there was no such gap in the now condition. We next used logistic and ordinary least squares regressions to predict whether students' e-mails elicited a response and whether participants accepted the request to meet, and we used Cox proportional hazards regression models to predict response speed (Model 5). In these analyses, we evaluated the impact of our primary predictors (temporal distance, minority or female identity, and their interaction), clustering standard errors by student name and controlling for faculty race, gender, and rank; school.

1. In the article what were some of the main takeaways presented in its research? 200 words