If a manager seeking to fill an open position imagines the “ideal” employee before searching for an applicant, the result may be increased stereotyping, says a team led by Jazmin L. Brown-Iannuzzi of the University of North Carolina. Research participants who were asked to imagine an ideal worker were more likely to envision a white employee; their likelihood of picturing a black candidate was near zero. In a subsequent experiment, participants who had imagined an ideal employee ranked a job applicant with a stereotypically black name (“Jamal”) less favorably than applicants with stereotypically white names (“Jay,” “Gregg,” “Brad,” “Todd”).
Source: Narrow imaginations: How imagining ideal employees can increase racial bias
