Can awareness reduce (and reverse) identity-driven bias in judgement? Evidence from international cricket

Chowdhury, S. M., Jewell, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4413-6618 and Singleton, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8247-8830 (2024) Can awareness reduce (and reverse) identity-driven bias in judgement? Evidence from international cricket. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 226. 106697. ISSN 0167-2681 doi: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106697

Abstract/Summary

Competitions often suffer from biased judgments by officials tied to their social identities. In international cricket, home nation umpires favoured home teams, but neutral umpires were introduced successfully to address this bias. However, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the return of home umpires, creating a natural experiment amid heightened scrutiny, modern technology, and sometimes empty stadiums. Consistent with the predictions of our behavioural model, we find no evidence of in-group bias during the pandemic; instead, we observe evidence of over-compensation. The pre-pandemic home team advantage in ‘leg before wicket’ decisions vanished, with home umpires seemingly favouring the away opposition, compared with neutral umpires in the period before, especially in more marginal or difficult decisions. This suggests that awareness and scrutiny can not only eliminate identity-driven judgement bias but may even reverse it.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/117573
Identification Number/DOI	10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106697
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Economics
Publisher	Elsevier
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