Out of Work and Out of Luck? Layoffs, System Justification, and Hiring Decisions for People Who Have Been Laid Off

Are hiring decisions affected by knowledge that a job applicant was previously laid off? We expected decisional biases to be linked with the motivational tendency to believe that society is fair and outcomes are just and deserved (hereafter, system justifying beliefs [SJBs]). Indeed, hiring decisions were more likely to disadvantage a laid off applicant as SJBs increased both when detailed job application information was reviewed for one laid off applicant (Study 1) and when the applicant was described as one of many laid off as the result of corporate downsizing (Study 2). Furthermore, both experiments supported a mediation model, whereby greater endorsement of SJBs was associated with greater perceptions of weaknesses in the laid off applicant, which in turn led to less sympathy, and finally to biased hiring decisions. Study 2 additionally demonstrated that all findings held when controlling for other ideologies.