Choosing and Using Information in Evaluation Decisions

We use a controlled experiment to study how information acquisition impacts candidate
evaluations. We provide evaluators with group-level information on performance and the
opportunity to acquire additional, individual-level performance information before making a
final evaluation. We find that, on average, evaluators under-acquire individual-level information,
leading to more stereotypical evaluations of candidates. Consistent with stereotyping, we
find that (irrelevant) group-level comparisons have a significant impact on how candidates are
evaluated; group-level comparisons bias initial assessments, responses to information, and final
evaluations. This leads to under-recognition of talented candidates from comparatively weaker
groups and over-selection of untalented candidates from comparatively stronger groups.