The Effect of Inclusive Policies on Economic Types of Discrimination

Abstract: Inclusive policies that implement inter-group contact has been found to increase or to decrease discrimination in the empirical literature. These conflicting results might originate from differences in addressed types of discrimination – i.e. whether discriminatory behavior arises from differences in tastes or beliefs – and differences in contact’s capacity to alter tastes and beliefs. This article investigates the causal effect of contact on statistical and taste-based discrimination as well as on the associated anticipation effects of the latter. In our experiment, republicans and democrats are assigned to teams comprising out-group members or to remain in homogeneous teams, interact in a cooperative task, and subsequently play different games apt to elicit their discriminatory tastes and beliefs about out-groups. Our contact intervention remedied taste-based discrimination by about 45%, and had no significant impact on inter-group trust and on statistical discrimination. Derived lessons for policymakers concerned with the reduction of discrimination involve features that inclusive policies should strive for by changing preferences or beliefs, and thereby reducing different types of discrimination.