Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijmpps/v30y2009i1-2p43-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Implicit prejudice and ethnic minorities

Author

Listed:
  • Jens Agerström
  • Dan‐Olof Rooth
Abstract
Purpose - The aim of this paper is to examine whether Swedish employers implicitly/automatically hold negative attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims, an ethnic minority group subjected to substantial labor market discrimination in Sweden and, more specifically, associate members of this minority group with lower work productivity, as compared with native Swedes. Design/methodology/approach - Adapted versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwaldet al., 1998) designed to measure implicit attitudes and productivity stereotypes toward Arab‐Muslims were used. Corresponding explicit measures were administered. Findings - The results clearly show that employers have stronger negative implicit attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims relative to native Swedes as well as implicitly perceiving Arab‐Muslims to be less productive than native Swedes. Notably, the explicit measures reveal much weaker negative associations. Practical implications - Since Arab‐Muslims are automatically perceived as being less productive, the present findings suggest that negative implicit productivity stereotypes could have significant effects on labor market outcomes, such as when employers make hiring decisions. Given that many hiring decisions are presumably based on “gut‐feelings”, implicit attitudes and stereotypes, more so than their explicit counterparts, may exert a substantial impact on how employers contemplate and make decisions regarding human resources. Originality/value - Whereas traditional research has focused on self‐conscious, explicit work‐related attitudes toward various ethnic minority groups, the study offers a novel approach to understanding work‐related prejudice.

Suggested Citation

  • Jens Agerström & Dan‐Olof Rooth, 2009. "Implicit prejudice and ethnic minorities," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 30(1/2), pages 43-55, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:30:y:2009:i:1/2:p:43-55
    DOI: 10.1108/01437720910948384
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437720910948384/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437720910948384/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/01437720910948384?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carlsson, Magnus & Eriksson, Stefan, 2012. "Do Reported Attitudes towards Immigrants Predict Ethnic Discrimination?," Working Paper Series 2012:6, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    2. Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2010. "Automatic associations and discrimination in hiring: Real world evidence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 523-534, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:30:y:2009:i:1/2:p:43-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.