Page 290 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases
P. 290
11. PERSONALITY-BASED UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION
257
incumbents to the extent that its variance was a function of factors other
than their actual performance (e.g., their race, age, or sex ). It deserves
adding that when measures of both predictors and criteria share the same
bias, there can be a very strong, but highly spurious relationship between
scores on such measures, leading to the erroneous conclusion that the pre
dictor has criterion-related validity.
Bases for Unfair Discrimination in the Workplace
Unfair discrimination in the workplace can stem from a number of fac
tors, including measures of job aptitude, job ability, or job performance
that focus on such abstract properties of individuals as their race, sex, reli
gion, or sexual orientation. In cases in which selection systems discriminate
unfairly in terms of these and other criteria, individuals (also referred to
hereinafter as targets) who are harmed by the systems have the potential to
seek redress through the legal system. Unfortunately, however, there is no
redress for individuals who experience unfair discrimination on the basis
of many other variables. Of particular relevance to this chapter is unfair dis
crimination based on personality. This issue is important for two reasons.
First, individuals who experience unfair personality-based discrimination
typically are afforded little or no protection by existing laws governing the
employment relationship (e.g., Civil Rights Act of 1991). Second, decision
makers often have little or no compunction over the use of such measures in
selecting individuals for jobs or other types of "treatments" (e.g., training,
promotion, mentoring).
STIGMAS
Individuals are stigmatized (i.e., bear stigmas or marks) to the extent that
there is a negative (discrediting) discrepancy between their virtual social
identity and their actual social identity (Goffman, 1963; Jones et al., 1984).
A virtual social identity is a perceiver's conception (e.g., prototype, stereo
type) of what a target should be like in terms of a host of factors, including
race, physical appearance, moral character, religious beliefs, sexual orien
tation, nationality, and personality. It generally reflects what the perceiver
considers to be acceptable, normal, or desirable.
In contrast to a virtual social identity, an actual social identity is a per-
ceiver's views about a target's actual characteristics, which may be real
(i.e., verifiable) or assumed (i.e., inferred by the perceiver). Thus, for ex
ample, because Blacks (as a group) are often perceived to be less intelli
gent than Whites (as a group), any given Black person may bear the "low