Replication Data for: Audit experiments of racial discrimination and the importance of symmetry in exposure to cues

Researchers are often interested in whether discrimination on the basis of racial cues persists above and beyond discrimination on the basis of non-racial attributes that decision-makers — e.g., employers, legislators, etc. — infer from such cues. We show that existing audit experiments may be unable to parse these explanations because of an asymmetry in when decision-makers are exposed to cues of race and additional signals intended to rule out discrimination due to other attributes. For example, email audit experiments typically cue race via the name in the email address, at which point legislators can choose to open the email, but cue other attributes in the body of the email, which decision-makers can be exposed to only after opening the email. We derive the bias resulting from this asymmetry and then propose two distinct solutions for email audit experiments. The first exposes decision-makers to all cues before the decision to open. The second crafts the email to ensure no discrimination in opening and then exposes decision-makers to all cues in the body of the email after opening. This second solution works without measures of opening, but can be improved when researchers do measure opening, even if with error.研究人员往往致力于探究：基于种族线索的歧视，是否会在决策者（如雇主、立法者等）从此类线索中推断出的非种族属性相关歧视之外，独立存续。我们发现，现有审计实验由于在决策者接触种族线索与用于排除其他属性引发歧视的额外信号的时间节点上存在不对称性，可能无法厘清上述两类歧视的差异。例如，邮件审计实验通常通过邮箱地址中的姓名传递种族线索，此时决策者便可选择是否打开邮件；而其他属性的线索则置于邮件正文中，决策者仅在打开邮件后才能接触到这些信息。我们推导了该不对称性所引发的偏误，并针对邮件审计实验提出了两种截然不同的解决方案。第一种方案是让决策者在做出打开邮件的决策前，接触到所有线索。第二种方案则先对邮件进行设计，确保打开环节不存在歧视，随后在决策者打开邮件后，向其展示邮件正文中的所有线索。该方案无需测量邮件打开行为即可生效，即便研究人员对打开行为的测量存在误差，仍可借此进一步优化该方案。