Walking the Talk? What Employers Say Versus What They Do
Abstract
This article considers the relationship between employers' attitudes toward hiring exoffenders and their actual hiring behavior. Using data from an experimental audit study of entry-level jobs matched with a telephone survey of the same employers, the authors compare employers' willingness to hire black and white ex-offenders, as represented both by their self-reports and by their decisions in actual hiring situations. Employers who indicated a greater likelihood of hiring ex-offenders in the survey were no more likely to hire an ex-offender in practice. Furthermore, although the survey results indicated no difference in the likelihood of hiring black versus white ex-offenders, audit results show large differences by race. These comparisons suggest that employer surveys-even those using an experimental design to control for social desirability bias-may be insufficient for drawing conclusions about the actual level of hiring discrimination against stigmatized groups.
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Research using employer interviews leaves uncertain how much self-reported attitudes influence actual hiring decisions.
“At the same time, research relying on interviews with employers leaves uncertain the degree to which self-reported attitudes are influential in actual hiring decisions (Pager and Quillian 2005).”
From Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment (2009) · cites this paper as Pager and Quillian 2005
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- Authors
- Pager, D., & Quillian, L.
- Affiliations
- Northwestern University (US)
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pager, Devah
- ORCID
- Quillian, Lincoln
- Venue
- American Sociological Review
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2005-06
- Volume
- 70
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 355-380
- ISSN
- 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-8271
- OpenAlex
- W1965968147
- Cited by
- 640
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 31 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 40 · 2021: 44 · 2020: 36 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 35 · 2016: 41 · 2015: 27 · 2014: 51 · 2013: 25 · 2012: 30
- FWCI
- 46.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Sociological Review (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Employer Branding and e-HRM
- Keywords
- hiring discrimination, ex-offenders, employer perceptions, racial discrimination, audit studies, social desirability bias, employer survey, entry-level jobs, stigma
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