Preferences for, and Familiarity With, Blinding Among HR Practitioners

Abstract

“Blinding” — purposefully limiting the information incorporated into an evaluation to reduce the risk of bias — is a policy solution employed in various domains to increase the fairness and accuracy of evaluations. However, at many important organizational junctures, such as hiring decisions, promotion assessments, and performance reviews, blinding policies are relatively rare. For example, hiring managers generally have broad, rather than constrained, autonomy in selecting the information that is incorporated into hiring decisions. Consequentially, hiring decisions are susceptible to bias via non-credential information gathered through unstructured interview procedures or internet searches. The goals of the present research were twofold. First, using a sample of HR practitioners with extensive hiring experience, we explored preferences for self-blinding — a personal choice to avoid receiving potentially biasing information about a target of evaluation — in a mock hiring task. Second, we gauged practitioners’ professional experience and familiarity with blinding policies in organizational settings.