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Diversity in employee representation is often advocated for its potential to promote the diversity of ideas, and thereby innovation. Michèle Belot discusses the phenomenon of ‘idea homophily’, which is a tendency to be more interested in ideas closer to one’s own.

Image courtesy of interviewee. February 14, 2024

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This video video discusses the role of bias in the selection of ideas and candidates within the economy and academia, focusing on how these biases may influence employment opportunities and the diversity of ideas contributed by various demographics. Economists are interested in innovation and the processes through which new ideas emerge, especially in relation to job creation and societal value.

The speaker highlights that individuals often favor ideas similar to their own, which can affect hiring decisions and academic publications. They emphasize the issue of underrepresentation in various fields, noting particularly the dominance of white males in many sectors. Despite efforts to include diverse groups, biases may still lead to a preference for ideas and candidates that resemble existing norms.

They present research findings indicating that women specializing in traditionally male-dominated fields tend to perform well in job markets. However, they stress the complexity of interpreting these results due to confounding factors related to individual capabilities and employer preferences.

An experimental study is outlined, evaluating how subtle incentives can encourage engagement with underrepresented ideas. The results reveal significant gender differences in preferences for topics, with men leaning towards technology and business, while women gravitate towards health and environment-related discussions.

The speaker concludes that while diversity initiatives are essential, they should not overlook merit and quality. Policies aimed at improving diversity should focus on broadening the spectrum of fields and ideas rather than merely increasing representation. This video video includes raising awareness of biases and encouraging an openness to ideas from different backgrounds to leverage the full benefits of diversity.

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So we are interested, we are economists,

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so we are interested in ideas

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and innovation in general in many sectors of the economy.

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It's important to think about

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how do you come up with new ideas.

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It's very important to create employment, create new jobs,

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and also just to add value in, in society

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and, and in the economy.

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And so we are interested in

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how do we actually come about come,

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how do new ideas come about?

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And often you think about, well, people have ideas

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and implement these ideas,

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and then they make their way into society.

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Now, this process of actually selecting ideas

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and implementing ideas is maybe not as innocuous

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as we think, because there's often actually employers

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who select, you know, who they are going to hire.

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And then when you think about academia, we have a lot of,

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you know, institutions in place

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that basically select which ideas are gonna be published,

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which ideas are patented and so on.

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So we're interested in the fact that, the people

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who might be doing this selection obviously have their own,

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you know, preferences and interests

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and beliefs in what might be good ideas.

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Um, and our conjecture was that maybe,

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and this would apply to all of us, we may have a little bit

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of a bias towards ideas that are close to our own ideas.

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So it's almost like a totology,

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but of course, I'm gonna be more interested in ideas

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that are close to my own ideas.

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And so, if you think about an employer who is interviewing,

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you know, a number of, of candidates,

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and all these candidates have different ideas,

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you may think that maybe they're gonna be more enthusiastic,

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more excited by candidates who have ideas

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that really resonate with, with the person

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who is making the decision.

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Um, which is this idea of idea mo fully.

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Now, of course, because in many sectors of the economy,

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well, we have a history of, of course,

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the labor force being more white male, dominated.

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Uh, then the, the, the question is whether this actually

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influences,

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which ideas gets elected even when there are efforts

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to actually try to bring in, underrepresented groups.

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And so this is something

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that we know is very much in the air in many sectors

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of the economy, in academia, there's a lot of attention

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to try to bring in underrepresented groups in academia.

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And then you sort of think, well, this could be a good idea

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because also just for the, the, the purpose

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of actually generating new ideas, novel angles and so on.

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Um, but if, if there is at the same time this tendency

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to try to go for things that resemble all the ideas,

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then you don't get the benefit of the,

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the full benefit of diversity.

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So this is a, in a nutshell, the sort

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of the context of the study.

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And we were interested in studying this, with real,

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you know, data from the real world.

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But, we focus on academia

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because this is a, sector we know well

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and where ideas are very important.

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And then we also have additional evidence from an experiment

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where we are just really interested in

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what ideas people engage with

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and whether the ideas they're happy to engage

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with are in a way malleable if we give them a little bit

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of a nudge, a little bit of an incentive to actually engage

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with other ideas.

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There is a lot of literature,

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and actually quite recently, perhaps even more,

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this is really a booming, you know, area.

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Um, of course we know that they are, you know,

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there are disparities between men

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and women, like in other sectors of the economy.

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So it's harder for, women, for example, to progress

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through, the academic profession

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to reach, you know, higher levels.

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There are fewer, female professors than they are,

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female, junior professors.

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And so as if you look at every level, you see that

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as you go higher up, then there are less and less women.

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It is also true for other, underrepresented,

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minorities.

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Uh, and there are lots of, you know, discussions about

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what that may be the case.

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And this is what the literature is really been tackling.

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You know, what are the, the barriers?

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Is it actually on the side of, the, the women themselves

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who are actually maybe have different preferences

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or might actually, be, finding some characteristics

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of the academic world, not so attractive, whether it's,

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the fact that it's competitive

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or the fact that, you actually have to go

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through a tenure track which overlaps with, years

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where many women would like to have children and, and so on.

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So this is a, a, a quite a broad literature.

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Now, our work is really, to try to think about barriers

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that a barrier that has maybe

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not been receiving that much attention.

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And, which is this idea that, well, the, the,

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the sort of, we are moving from an environment

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that has been built by, you know, men

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and then we are trying to move into a, an environment

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that, welcomes, you know, other, other groups.

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And I think that there is a genuine, you know,

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interest in getting, you know, these other groups.

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But at the same time, we think there might be,

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we don't always realize maybe, the sort of, biases

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that you, we might have towards, for example, what are the,

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the ideas, the fields that we should,

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should be investing in and working on?

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So our first, study is a study, from the field.

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So that means we have real world, data,

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And we look at placement.

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So we look at the first job

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that a PhD candidates get when they graduate,

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in economics from the top institutions in the us.

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So we have looked at the top 33 institutions in the US

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and we look at where they find a job

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and whether in particular they're likely to find a job

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as assistant professor, which is probably the most,

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you know, the best job you can hope to get when you,

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graduate as a PhD, student in economics.

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Um, so this is a desirable, type of position.

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And we look at, whether men

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and women are equally likely to find such jobs,

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but also more, perhaps more relevant to the topic

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is whether, the area they specialize in matters.

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Uh, and so the hypothesis was

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that if there is something at work, like ideal moly,

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you might expect that maybe the people

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who would do best in this market are people who have id

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or who specialize in areas that are similar to

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what already exists.

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Um, and so in particular, male fields in particular,

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and so that's the, the, the hypothesis we tested.

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And what we found is indeed that this is the case.

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But what was also interesting is that the group

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that is really advantaged at the moment, who seems

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to be doing much better than everyone else,

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are actually women who specialize in male fields.

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Uh, so there is actually an advantage.

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Women are doing better than men on the, on the market,

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but especially if they are actually,

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specializing in male fields.

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Now, the problem with this data, the field data, is

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that it's confounding all sorts of effects.

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No. So we still don't know whether it's actually the choice

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of the women themselves

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or whether it's something on the side of the employer.

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Um, we don't know whether

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for some reason the women specializing in in male fields

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might be much better, you know,

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or much might have characteristics that make them much more,

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attractive than than others.

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We try to control for that.

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But it's still, it is very hard to have a very nice clean,

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you know, setting where you can say, well,

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these are really the same people.

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They just differ by gender

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and by the field they specialize in.

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So it's very hard to, to do that.

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And that's what, the experiment allows us to do.

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So we designed an online experiment where instead

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of choosing between, you know, human candidates who apply

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to a job, you choose between TED Talks basically,

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and you choose, you know, what talk you're gonna listen to.

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And these are, again, these are gonna be participants

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who are college educated, who are recruited from a platform

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that is a research platform.

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And so they are, then asked, well, you are supposed

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to choose between these talks.

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We give you an incentive to choose a talk that is

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of high quality.

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And this is something that we, measured separately

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with a separate sample of experts.

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And so we give them an incentive.

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We tell them, you will actually receive money,

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you receive more money if you choose a talk

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that is of high quality.

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And we also want you to engage with the idea.

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So after the talk,

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after watching the the talk, you will also have questions.

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Um, and then, so that's the fourth first, the baseline.

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And what we see is very, very strong differences, which

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to some extent depressed me a little

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bit when I look at this.

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But it's true. You see very big differences between men

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and women in what types of talks they watch, right?

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So men are much more likely to go for talks that are related

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to technology and business,

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and women are much more likely to watch talks that relate

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to environment and and health.

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So we have, you know, this is a little bit the sort of,

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test of the hypothesis that first of all,

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they are big differences in what men

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and women are interested in to start with.

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But then maybe the sort of nice, sort of,

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next step is to say, well,

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what if I'm give you a little nudge to actually look at

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what you talk that is, either by a woman, so

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that is one treatment,

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or I'm giving you, a little incentive

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to watch a talk that is actually in a field that women tend

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to specialize in.

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So health and the environment, for example.

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And so we have different groups of people

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who face these different, incentives,

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and then we look at how it affects

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what they choose to watch.

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And the incentive is relatively small.

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So this is something we want to stress.

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It sort of echoes, you know, the idea of this,

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diversity initiatives that we have in, academia

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or in many sectors is that we understand it is good to try

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to attract underrepresented groups,

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but we also really want to preserve, you know, the goal

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of going for high quality candidates and so on.

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So on the, these incentives for, bringing in,

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diverse groups tend

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to be quite small also in the real world.

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But what we see is

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that this actually really shifts massively what people are

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engaging, engaging with.

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And in fact, but,

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but again, we replicate some

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of the findings we have in the field, data in the sense

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that when I'm asking, you know, a a sample

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of male respondents to actually listen to a talk by a woman,

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they, they will choose a talk by a woman,

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but still, you know, will prefer the male field.

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So, so the ones that are in over demand are the women

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who are in the male field.

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So this is sort of, if you want nailing the point that

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maybe in the real world there might be some of

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that going on as well.

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Uh, is that, when we sort of have all these initiatives

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that aim at, you know, bringing in diverse groups,

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we might still want to find, you know, the women, the women

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or the underrepresented, ethnic groups in,

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in areas that are typically, you know,

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the ones of white men.

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And this is what we find interesting is, is,

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hopefully, you know,

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basically raising the awareness on, on this issue.

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Uh, for us, in many departments meetings,

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we actually often discuss this.

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And, and it's very hard to be, you know, going a bit beyond,

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you know, your general interests.

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Of course you have your own preferences.

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Uh, and, and we all, you know, we all have that.

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And so it's not,

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it's not just about blaming the white men,

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it's just we all have these biases,

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but, it just happens to be the case

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that now there's one group that is just more represented.

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But I want to be somewhat pessi, optimistic about

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how malleable, these preferences might be.

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And I think that this is maybe the hope that

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by raising a little bit the awareness

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and maybe giving a little bit of notch to actually perhaps

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instead of saying, well, let's go

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and try to hire, you know,

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people from underrepresented groups.

13:30.285 --> 13:33.565
I think it would be maybe a better idea to think about

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let's try and hire, in groups that are, in,

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in fields that are typically the ones

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that underrepresented groups specialize in.

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I do think that we can think about policies.

13:47.425 --> 13:51.525
We are particularly, concerned about policies that push

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for the hiring of underrepresented groups, per se,

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without thinking about maybe what we want.

13:59.745 --> 14:01.165
And particularly if we want

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to really benefit from diversity, we might want

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to actually think about, let's broaden our horizon.

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Let's try to actually, bring in,

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bring in ideas from, from, groups

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that are underrepresented

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and broaden our horizon,

14:18.675 --> 14:20.765
broaden the fields we are looking at.

Exploring Innovation Bias in Academia and Economics

00:00:00 - So we are interested, we are economists, so we are interested in ideas and innovation in general in many sectors of the economy. It's important to think about how do you come up with new ideas. It's very important to create employment, create new jobs, and also just to add value in, in society and, and in the economy. And so we are interested in how do we actually come about come, how do new ideas come about? And often you think about, well, people have ideas
00:00:33 - and then they make their way into society. Now, this process of actually selecting ideas and implementing ideas is maybe not as innocuous as we think, because there's often actually employers who select, you know, who they are going to hire. And then when you think about academia, we have a lot of, you know, institutions in place that basically select which ideas are gonna be published, which ideas are patented and so on.
00:01:07 - who might be doing this selection obviously have their own, you know, preferences and interests and beliefs in what might be good ideas. and our conjecture was that maybe, and this would apply to all of us, we may have a little bit of a bias towards ideas that are close to our own ideas. So it's almost like a totology, but of course, I'm gonna be more interested in ideas that are close to my own ideas.
00:01:38 - you know, a number of, of candidates, and all these candidates have different ideas, you may think that maybe they're gonna be more enthusiastic, more excited by candidates who have ideas that really resonate with, with the person who is making the decision. which is this idea of idea mo fully. Now, of course, because in many sectors of the economy, well, we have a history of, of course, the labor force being more white male, dominated.
00:02:12 - influences, which ideas gets elected even when there are efforts to actually try to bring in, underrepresented groups. And so this is something that we know is very much in the air in many sectors of the economy, in academia, there's a lot of attention to try to bring in underrepresented groups in academia. And then you sort of think, well, this could be a good idea because also just for the, the, the purpose
00:02:44 - but if, if there is at the same time this tendency to try to go for things that resemble all the ideas, then you don't get the benefit of the, the full benefit of diversity. So this is a, in a nutshell, the sort of the context of the study. And we were interested in studying this, with real, you know, data from the real world. But, we focus on academia

Examining Innovation and Gender Disparities in Academia

00:03:14 - and where ideas are very important. And then we also have additional evidence from an experiment where we are just really interested in what ideas people engage with and whether the ideas they're happy to engage with are in a way malleable if we give them a little bit of a nudge, a little bit of an incentive to actually engage with other ideas. There is a lot of literature, and actually quite recently, perhaps even more, this is really a booming, you know, area.
00:03:47 - there are disparities between men and women, like in other sectors of the economy. So it's harder for, women, for example, to progress through, the academic profession to reach, you know, higher levels. There are fewer, female professors than they are, female, junior professors. And so as if you look at every level, you see that as you go higher up, then there are less and less women.
00:04:19 - minorities. and there are lots of, you know, discussions about what that may be the case. And this is what the literature is really been tackling. You know, what are the, the barriers? Is it actually on the side of, the, the women themselves who are actually maybe have different preferences or might actually, be, finding some characteristics of the academic world, not so attractive, whether it's, the fact that it's competitive
00:04:50 - through a tenure track which overlaps with, years where many women would like to have children and, and so on. So this is a, a, a quite a broad literature. Now, our work is really, to try to think about barriers that a barrier that has maybe not been receiving that much attention. And, which is this idea that, well, the, the, the sort of, we are moving from an environment
00:05:22 - and then we are trying to move into a, an environment that, welcomes, you know, other, other groups. And I think that there is a genuine, you know, interest in getting, you know, these other groups. But at the same time, we think there might be, we don't always realize maybe, the sort of, biases that you, we might have towards, for example, what are the, the ideas, the fields that we should, should be investing in and working on?
00:05:53 - So that means we have real world, data, And we look at placement. So we look at the first job that a PhD candidates get when they graduate, in economics from the top institutions in the us. So we have looked at the top 33 institutions in the US and we look at where they find a job and whether in particular they're likely to find a job as assistant professor, which is probably the most,

Gender Dynamics in Academic Job Market

00:06:25 - graduate as a PhD, student in economics. so this is a desirable, type of position. And we look at, whether men and women are equally likely to find such jobs, but also more, perhaps more relevant to the topic is whether, the area they specialize in matters. and so the hypothesis was that if there is something at work, like ideal moly,
00:06:56 - who would do best in this market are people who have id or who specialize in areas that are similar to what already exists. and so in particular, male fields in particular, and so that's the, the, the hypothesis we tested. And what we found is indeed that this is the case. But what was also interesting is that the group that is really advantaged at the moment, who seems
00:07:26 - are actually women who specialize in male fields. so there is actually an advantage. Women are doing better than men on the, on the market, but especially if they are actually, specializing in male fields. Now, the problem with this data, the field data, is that it's confounding all sorts of effects. No. So we still don't know whether it's actually the choice of the women themselves or whether it's something on the side of the employer.
00:07:57 - for some reason the women specializing in in male fields might be much better, you know, or much might have characteristics that make them much more, attractive than than others. We try to control for that. But it's still, it is very hard to have a very nice clean, you know, setting where you can say, well, these are really the same people. They just differ by gender and by the field they specialize in. So it's very hard to, to do that.
00:08:28 - So we designed an online experiment where instead of choosing between, you know, human candidates who apply to a job, you choose between TED Talks basically, and you choose, you know, what talk you're gonna listen to. And these are, again, these are gonna be participants who are college educated, who are recruited from a platform that is a research platform. And so they are, then asked, well, you are supposed to choose between these talks.
00:08:59 - of high quality. And this is something that we, measured separately with a separate sample of experts. And so we give them an incentive. We tell them, you will actually receive money, you receive more money if you choose a talk that is of high quality. And we also want you to engage with the idea. So after the talk, after watching the the talk, you will also have questions.

Gender Differences in Talk Preferences and Engagement

00:09:31 - And what we see is very, very strong differences, which to some extent depressed me a little bit when I look at this. But it's true. You see very big differences between men and women in what types of talks they watch, right? So men are much more likely to go for talks that are related to technology and business, and women are much more likely to watch talks that relate to environment and and health.
00:10:01 - test of the hypothesis that first of all, they are big differences in what men and women are interested in to start with. But then maybe the sort of nice, sort of, next step is to say, well, what if I'm give you a little nudge to actually look at what you talk that is, either by a woman, so that is one treatment, or I'm giving you, a little incentive
00:10:33 - to specialize in. So health and the environment, for example. And so we have different groups of people who face these different, incentives, and then we look at how it affects what they choose to watch. And the incentive is relatively small. So this is something we want to stress. It sort of echoes, you know, the idea of this, diversity initiatives that we have in, academia
00:11:04 - to attract underrepresented groups, but we also really want to preserve, you know, the goal of going for high quality candidates and so on. So on the, these incentives for, bringing in, diverse groups tend to be quite small also in the real world. But what we see is that this actually really shifts massively what people are engaging, engaging with.
00:11:33 - but again, we replicate some of the findings we have in the field, data in the sense that when I'm asking, you know, a a sample of male respondents to actually listen to a talk by a woman, they, they will choose a talk by a woman, but still, you know, will prefer the male field. So, so the ones that are in over demand are the women who are in the male field. So this is sort of, if you want nailing the point that
00:12:05 - that going on as well. is that, when we sort of have all these initiatives that aim at, you know, bringing in diverse groups, we might still want to find, you know, the women, the women or the underrepresented, ethnic groups in, in areas that are typically, you know, the ones of white men. And this is what we find interesting is, is, hopefully, you know,

Addressing Biases in Hiring Practices

00:12:37 - for us, in many departments meetings, we actually often discuss this. And, and it's very hard to be, you know, going a bit beyond, you know, your general interests. Of course you have your own preferences. and, and we all, you know, we all have that. And so it's not, it's not just about blaming the white men, it's just we all have these biases, but, it just happens to be the case that now there's one group that is just more represented.
00:13:10 - how malleable, these preferences might be. And I think that this is maybe the hope that by raising a little bit the awareness and maybe giving a little bit of notch to actually perhaps instead of saying, well, let's go and try to hire, you know, people from underrepresented groups. I think it would be maybe a better idea to think about let's try and hire, in groups that are, in,
00:13:41 - that underrepresented groups specialize in. I do think that we can think about policies. We are particularly, concerned about policies that push for the hiring of underrepresented groups, per se, without thinking about maybe what we want. And particularly if we want to really benefit from diversity, we might want to actually think about, let's broaden our horizon. Let's try to actually, bring in,
00:14:18 - that are underrepresented and broaden our horizon, broaden the fields we are looking at.

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