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11. PERSONALITY-BASED UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION
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 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
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