People accounting: Social category-based choice

This paper presents people accounting—a hypothesis that describes how a simple numerical imbalance in representation along nominal social category lines can aVect people’s choice of candidates in highly competitive situations (e.g., awards, jobs, etc.). For example, two scholarship Wnalists from California and New York may be equally qualiWed, but the award-winning chance for the California candidate will drop precipitously if 8 of the past 10 winners were from California. Studies 1–3 illustrate this eVect. Study 4 links people accounting to intergroup fairness concerns and suggests that people accounting is more likely to occur when the category dimension is meaningful (e.g., Stanford/Princeton) than when it is not (e.g., left/right-handedness). Study 5 shows that candidates from overrepresented categories (e.g., “Californians”) must achieve higher minimum standards in order to be selected. The implication is that highly competitive decisions are often inXuenced by headcounts along mundane social category lines. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.