Page 391 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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HE1LMAN AND HAYNES
also women not associated with an affirmative action program. Further­
more, we reasoned that if affirmative action leads to negative competence
perceptions via the discounting process, these perceptions should occur
regardless of whether the situation is one in which the targeted individual
would have been susceptible to negative views based on ordinary stereo­
type based processes. Thus, we not only expected association with affirma­
tive action to worsen an unfavorable evaluation of a woman's competence
when the job was one for which she typically was viewed as suboptimally
qualified, but we also expected association with affirmative action to create
an unfavorable evaluation of a woman's competence when it would not
otherwise have occurred.
A laboratory experiment was used in the initial test of these ideas. Both
hiree (man, woman, affirmative action woman) and job sex-type (strongly
male or slightly male), were systematically varied. Participants, who were
male and female college undergraduates, reviewed a packet of materials
concerning a person recently hired for a job. The packet included a job de­
scription in the form of a recruitment bulletin indicating job requirements
and work responsibilities and an employment application containing in­
formation about educational background, work experience, and general
demographic information. These were followed by a brief questionnaire
containing, among other measures, several items comprising a competence
scale (e.g. "How competently do you expect this individual to perform this
job?" very competently-not at all competently; "How effective do you think
this individual will be at doing the work?" very effective-not at all effective).
Based on information obtained from our subject population, the job of
electrician was chosen to represent a strongly male sex-typed position and
that of hospital laboratory technician was chosen to represent the slightly
male sex-typed job. To reinforce this manipulation, the proportional rep­
resentation of men and women currently employed in the position at the
hiring organization was presented (electrician—92% men; lab technician—
59% men). Hiree was varied using female and male names, and a photo­
graph was included to ensure that sex, not race was the clear basis of the af­
firmative action initiative. In addition, on the application form, in a section
labeled "for clerical purposes only," there appeared the handwritten word,
"hire," accompanied by the start date. In the affirmative action condition,
the parenthetical phrase "affirmative action hire" also was included.
Results revealed the pattern of data predicted. When there was no men­
tion of affirmative action, women were evaluated less favorably than men
in terms of competence in the strongly male sex-typed position (electri­
cian), whereas they were evaluated equally favorably in the more neutral
sex-typed position (lab technician). However, when associated with affir­
mative action, the female hiree was rated less favorably than men in both