Social Currents http://scu.sagepub.com/ Religious Affiliation and Hiring Discrimination in the American South: A Field Experiment Michael Wallace, Bradley R. E. Wright and Allen Hyde Social Currents 2014 1: 189 originally published online 24 March 2014 DOI: 10.1177/2329496514524541 The online version of this article can be found at: http://scu.sagepub.com/content/1/2/189 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: Southern Sociological Society Additional services and information for Social Currents can be found at: Email Alerts: http://scu.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://scu.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://scu.sagepub.com/content/1/2/189.refs.html >> Version of Record - May 15, 2014 OnlineFirst Version of Record - Mar 24, 2014 What is This? Downloaded from scu.sagepub.com by guest on May 30, 2014 SCUXXX10.1177/2329496514524541Social CurrentsWallace et al. 524541research-article2014 Article Social Currents 2014, Vol. 1(2) 189 –207 Religious Affiliation and Hiring © The Southern Sociological Society 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Discrimination in the American DOI: 10.1177/2329496514524541 South: A Field Experiment scu.sagepub.com Michael Wallace1, Bradley R. E. Wright1, and Allen Hyde1 Abstract This article describes a field experiment in which we sent fictitious résumés to advertised job openings throughout the American South. We randomly altered the résumés to indicate affiliation in one of seven religious groups or a control group. We found that applicants who expressed a religious identity were 26 percent less likely to receive a response from employers. In general, Muslims, pagans, and atheists suffered the highest levels of discriminatory treatment from employers, a fictitious religious group and Catholics experienced moderate levels, evangelical Christians encountered little, and Jews received no discernible discrimination. We also found evidence suggesting the possibility that Jews received preferential treatment over other religious groups in employer responses. The results fit best with models of religious discrimination rooted in secularization theory and cultural distaste theory. We briefly discuss what our findings suggest for a more robust theory of prejudice and discrimination in society. Keywords religion, organizations, occupations, work, inequality, poverty, mobility Introduction received surprisingly little scholarly attention, especially among sociologists. Recent reviews Reports of religious discrimination in the of the sociology of religion have made scarce American workplace are increasingly common. mention of religion’s influence in the work- In the last 20 years, religious-based complaints place (Edgell 2012; Sherkat and Ellison 1999). filed by employees with the U.S. Equal Also, in a search of 16 major sociology jour- Employment Opportunity Commission increased nals from 1990 to 2012, we found only 15 from 1,388 in 1992 to 3,790 in 2010 (U.S. Equal articles that dealt with the intersection of “reli- Employment Opportunity Commission 2011). gion” and “work.” Of these, only one study— News reports documenting claims of religious in Greece—dealt with religious discrimination discrimination in the workplace have also in the workplace (Drydakis 2010). Expanding increased. Figure 1 shows results from a Lexus our search, we found 5 more articles in non- Nexus search of the number of print media arti- sociology journals on religious discrimination cles on religious discrimination in the workplace at work, for a total of 6. Thus, our knowledge and, as shown, they tripled from 1991 (397) to 2010 (1,197). While this increase in reports may not coincide exactly with increases in actual reli- 1University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA gious discrimination, it nevertheless signals Corresponding Author: increasing public awareness of the problem. Michael Wallace, University of Connecticut, 344 Despite increasing public awareness, reli- Mansfield Rd. Unit 2068, Storrs, CT 06269-2068, USA. gious discrimination in the workplace has Email: [email protected] Downloaded from scu.sagepub.com by guest on May 30, 2014 190 Social Currents 1(2) 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009 Three-Year Moving Average Figure 1. Print media counts for Lexus Nexus subject search of religious discrimination in the workplace, 1991-2010. about religious discrimination in the U.S. about one year later, we followed nearly identi- workplace is scant. cal procedures as in the New England study. We This study helps fill this gap in the literature. replicate this study in the South for both substan- Using an Internet-based field experiment in the tive and methodological reasons. Substantively, Southern United States, we examine whether different regions of the country have different employers discriminate in hiring against various religious climates. By several indicators, the religious groups. We sent employers résumés American South is the most devout region, and from fictitious job applicants that reported one New England is the least religious. The religious of seven different religious identities—atheist, climate of a region might affect levels of dis- Catholic, evangelical Christian, Jewish, Muslim, crimination in ways that are not obvious. Perhaps pagan, and a fictitious religious group—or a less religious regions such as New England are control group with no mention of religious affili- less accepting of overt religious expressions. Or, ation, and then tested whether employers’ perhaps areas that are more religiously homoge- response rates varied by religious group. neous, such as the American South, are less tol- erant of those who practice other religions or no religion at all. As such, the results of this study A Replication can be interpreted on their own (is there religious This study replicates a recent field experiment discrimination in the American South?) as well on religion and hiring discrimination we con- as comparatively (how does the quantity and ducted in the New England region (Wright et quality of religious discrimination in the South al. 2013). In the New England study, we sent compare with that found in New England?). As out résumés that randomly assigned affiliation such, this replication further documents the in seven religious groups and a control group, prevalence of religious discrimination in the and recorded patterns of employer response. United States, examines variations by region, We found strong levels of employment dis- and tests the reliability of résumé-based field crimination against Muslims and lesser experiments. amounts of discrimination against atheists, pagans, and Catholics, but on the whole, the Previous Studies of Religious levels of discrimination were subdued owing Discrimination in the largely to the relatively low levels of religios- Workplace ity and the ethos of religious tolerance that characterize New England. Field experiments are emerging as a new Replication is a key feature of experimental method for testing for workplace discrimina- research, so in our study of the South conducted tion but are still fairly rare and underutilized Downloaded from scu.sagepub.com by guest on May 30, 2014 Wallace et al. 191 (Pager 2007; Pager and Quillian 2005; Pager, responded equally positively to the three résu- Western, and Bonikowski 2009). Their under- més except those employers who advertised use is surprising since they offer a direct test sales positions. From them, black applicants for many forms of subtle, covert discrimina- received only a quarter as many positive tion that may escape public awareness. As responses as did white applicants. There was employers face legal and social pressure not to no difference in response between the white discriminate, they may use nondiscriminatory Protestant and Jewish applicants. justifications to mask discriminatory behaviors More recently, Ghumman and Jackson (Pager 2007). Field experiments have helped (2008) used a laboratory experiment to test the uncover employment discrimination against influence of “religious identifiers” on employ- blacks (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004), ability. A sample of college students rated the women with children (Correll, Benard, and employability of one of eight job applicants Paik 2007), gays and lesbians (Tilcsik 2011), with identical résumés, and the résumés had obese people (King et al. 2006), pregnant pictures attached in which applicants wore women (Hebl et al. 2007), and ex-convicts items of religious attire that marked them as (Pager 2003; Pager and Quillian 2005). Riach Christian, Muslim, or Jewish (along with a and Rich (2002:F515) argue for the use of this control group that had no religious identifiers). approach to study religious discrimination as They found little difference in the treatment of well. They note that “in the investigation of applicants, except that Muslims were rated economic discrimination, field experiments most employable for low-status jobs and least represent an important compliment to the con- employable for high-status jobs. In another ventional regression analysis approach. In the study, Ghumman and Jackson (2010) investi- future we expect that field experiments will be gated the effect of wearing the Muslim heads- applied more widely to age, disability, reli- carf. A sample of Muslim women rated their gion, and class” (emphasis added). expectations for