On the Limits of Anonymization for Promoting Diversity in Organizations

Anonymization of job applicant resumes is a recommended strategy to increase diversity in organizations, but large-scale tests have shown mixed results. We consider decision-makers' social dominance orientation (SDO), a measure of anti-egalitarianism/endorsement of group-based hierarchy, to illustrate the limits of anonymization. Across four pre-registered studies (N = 3,150), we show that (a) lower SDO individuals are less likely to hire individuals from underrepresented groups when job materials are anonymized and (b) they are more likely to opt into using anonymization. Taken together, these results suggest that opt-in anonymization policies may sometimes reduce the diversity of who is selected. Furthermore, people appear to have inaccurate lay beliefs about the consequences of anonymization. Our results suggest policy evaluations of diversity interventions should consider the interaction of heterogeneous treatment effects and selection effects, which may inadvertently lead to outcomes that are contrary to the stated policy goals.