casuistry and social category bias - hbs people space.pdfVIP

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 2004 by the American Psychological Association 2004, Vol. 87, No. 6, 817–831 0022-3514/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.87.6.817 Casuistry and Social Category Bias Michael I. Norton Joseph A. Vandello Massachusetts Institute of Technology University of South Florida John M. Darley Princeton University This research explored cases where people are drawn to make judgments between individuals based on questionable criteria, in particular those individuals’ social group memberships. We suggest that indi- viduals engage in casuistry to mask biased decision making, by recruiting more acceptable criteria to justify such decisions. We present 6 studies that demonstrate how casuistry licenses people to judge on the basis of social category information but appear unbiased—to both others and themselves—while doing so. In 2 domains (employment and college admissions decisions), with 2 social categories (gender and race), and with 2 motivations (favoring an in-group or out-group), the present studies explored how participants justify decisions biased by social category information by arbitrarily inflating the relative value of their