Exploration of hiring discrimination and possibilities for intervention through eye-tracking

This project investigates the mechanisms and processes of ethnic and racial discrimination in hiring through examining employment decisions using eye-tracking in combination with dialogue and survey in an experimental setting.

The project’s basic research contribution is to establish eye-tracking as a new means to understand implicit biases that affect the mechanism and process of racial discrimination in hiring.

As well, the project aims to clarify the processes underlying the existence of racial discrimination in hiring which have been established by other types of experimental methods such as correspondence testing.

The quantitative and qualitative data examine the relation between what employers attend to when reviewing a CV (demonstrated through eye tracking) and what employers communicate about their decision-making process (demonstrated through dialogue), and how this correlates with expressed attitudes (demonstrated though survey).

Based on the results of eye-tracking, dialogue and surveys, the project will explore ideas and attempt for interventions in two ways: a. through introducing small modifications in the CVs and b. through subtle gaze-direction, guiding attention to specific parts of the CVs.

The expected results of this project are highly relevant in Swedish society today in order to identify the practice and mechanisms of labor market discrimination, specifically the process of how unconscious and conscious choices are made when recruiting.