Impression formation of majority and minority applicants during resume screening—Does processing more information reduce prejudice?

Abstract

While previous research has consistently found evidence for ethnic discrimination after resume screening, the majority of those studies focused on outcomes of evaluating job applications. Therefore, we know little about what happens during resume screening. In the present study (N = 402), we tested whether impressions of majority and minority applicants are formed differently while processing separate snippets from job applications. While majority impressions were significantly more positive than minority impressions after the third snippet was processed, impressions did not differ anymore after four or more snippets. In specific, minority impressions improved significantly more in response to the fourth snippet, which provided information on a volunteering role. Furthermore, we found that negative information similarly harmed majority and minority impressions. Our findings suggest that minority applicants might suffer from prejudice if only little information from resumes is being processed. Thus, organizations might be able to prevent discriminatory outcomes by avoiding superficial resume screening.