Public Perceptions of Discrimination at Large Firms

We field and analyze an online survey eliciting beliefs about discrimination and other aspects of recruiting conduct by 164 large firms. Roughly one-third of survey respondents report having put off applying for a job due to fear of discrimination. For each firm, we construct measures of perceived discrimination, hiring discretion, and selectivity. Average beliefs about treatment of applicants with race-and sex-distinctive names correlate strongly with beliefs about broader notions of discrimination. Firms thought to prefer White job applicants are also viewed as favoring older workers, while perceptions of race and gender discrimination are only weakly correlated. Despite substantial inter-respondent disagreement, average beliefs about recruiting biases are nearly perfectly correlated across demographic groups. The race and gender composition of employees explains most cross-firm variation in average gender discrimination beliefs but little of the variation in average beliefs about race discrimination. We compare these average beliefs to experimental estimates of discrimination derived from a large resume correspondence study. Perceived gender discrimination robustly predicts experimental gender con-tact gaps, while beliefs about racial discrimination are only weakly related to racial contact gaps. Respondents tend to believe that selective firms discriminate more often and that managers have less hiring discretion at such firms. In contrast, experimental race contact gaps are larger at firms believed to grant managers more discretion and at firms believed to be less selective. After controlling for average beliefs about selectivity, average beliefs about racial discrimination become positively correlated with experimental race contact gaps.