The Social Transmission of Bias
Research on gender discrimination has traditionally focused on understanding the direct influence of individuals’ gender prejudice (e.g., sexism). But prejudice can also manifest indirectly. Non-prejudiced individuals sometimes serve as vessels for the transmission of others’ prejudices. People often accommodate or adhere to others’ unpalatable views, such as sexism or racism. In one line of research at SRBL, we investigate these attitude accommodation processes, seeking to understand how and why people pass along the perceived social biases of others.
For example, our research has examined the “third-party prejudice effect,” a phenomenon in which people make discriminatory hiring decisions because they are concerned with maximizing the fit between a new hire and the existing company members (e.g., Vial et al., 2025). These concerns stem from the perceived formal demands of the hiring manager role, which promote the accommodation of the inferred prejudices of others. The studies revealed that, regardless of their own attitudes toward women in the workplace, people in charge of making a hiring decision were less likely to hire a woman if they had reason to believe that someone in the organization harbored sexist attitudes. The studies also showed that assuaging role-relevant concerns about organizational fit can reduce people’s tendency to accommodate others’ prejudice in hiring decisions.
These findings have important theoretical implications, as they shed light on how gender bias spreads in organizations, and they highlight the influence of beliefs about roles (in this case, role-related duties and demands) in producing social inequalities. Focusing on attitude accommodation also has important practical implications, as it shifts attention away from trying to influence people’s own attitudes (which has proven to be quite difficult) and instead strongly suggests that efforts should be directed towards addressing the motivations at the root of people’s tendency to accommodate others’ prejudice.
Vial, A. C., Bosak, J., Flood, P., & Dovidio, J. (2025). Indirect influence of prejudice: How and why people accommodate the prejudices of others. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 19(4), e70055. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.70055. PDF.
Other SRBL publications on the social transmission of bias:
Vial, A. C. (2026). The social transmission of intergroup bias: When unprejudiced individuals accommodate others’ prejudices. In V. Esses, J. F. Dovidio, J. Jetten, D. Sekaquaptewa, & K. West (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Psychological Perspectives on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. SAGE. ISBN: 978-1529680836. PDF.
Vial, A. C., Bailey, A. H., & Dovidio, J. F. (2024). People who accommodate others' sexist views are themselves perceived to be sexist. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 48(2), 252-270. https://doi.org/10.1177/03616843231221501. PDF.
Vial, A. C., Bosak, J., Flood, P., & Dovidio, J. F. (2021). Individual variation in role construal predicts responses to third-party biases in hiring contexts. PLoS ONE, 16(2): e0244393. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244393. PDF.
Vial, A. C., Dovidio, J. F., & Brescoll, V. L. (2019). Channeling others' biases to meet role demands. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 82, 47-63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.01.004. PDF.
Vial, A. C., Brescoll, V. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2019). Third-party prejudice accommodation increases gender discrimination. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(1), 73-98. doi: 10.1037/pspi0000164. PDF.