What Counts as Discrimination? Third-Party Perceptions of Fairness of Employee Selection Decisions

While people's perceptions of some kinds of selection attributes have been investigated (e.g., race, gender), other kinds of selection attributes remain under-examined, despite their documented impact on selection outcomes (e.g., networks, alma mater). In Study 1, we investigate that while well-studied forms of discrimination form a clearly unfair cluster (e.g., race, gender), both well-studied and under-studied forms also form an ambiguous cluster (e.g., networks, alma mater). Study 2 shows that relevance, control, and privacy are most influential when participants think about fairness. Using an experimental approach in Study 3, we find that perceptions of relevance, controllability, and privacy of an attribute mediate perceptions of fairness of selecting on that attribute. Finally, in Study 4, we take a different approach and ask working adults to generate selection attributes that they consider fair versus discriminatory. Altogether, we find converging evidence that internality, relevance, and privacy drive perceptions of fairness of selection attributes.