Andrew Leigh has released interesting research he and co-authors have been doing on ethnic prejudice and discrimination, using several tests: sending employers CVs that are identical except for the ethnicity of names and seeing how many applicants get a call back, seeing whether there are differences in how many mis-addressed letters are returned to sender depending on the ethnicity of the sender’s name, and the implicit association test which I encouraged people to take last year.

Compared to an Anglo control group, Chinese and Middle Eastern names particularly were received less favourably in all three tests. Italian and Indigenous names generally did better. Here is the The Age‘s write-up of the research.

While I think this research is valuable, I differ slightly with Andrew L in how I look at the issue. For example, in discussing the various methods of examining ‘racism and discrimination’ Andrew and his co-authors Alison Booth and Elena Varganova say:
Continue reading “Prejudiced attitudes vs prejudiced behaviour” →