Judging job applicants by their politics: Effects of target–rater political dissimilarity on discrimination, cooperation, and stereotyping

Despite well-known problems associated with political prejudice, research that examines effects of political dissimilarity in organizational contexts is scarce. We present findings from a pre-registered online experiment (N = 973) which suggest that both Democrats and Republicans discriminate and negatively stereotype job applicants with a political orientation that is dissimilar to their own. The effects were small for competence judgments, moderate in size for hiring judgments, and large for warmth ratings and for willingness to cooperate and socialize with the applicant. Furthermore, for all outcomes except competence judgments, Democrats discriminated and stereotyped applicants to a larger extent than Republicans did. These findings shed light on the consequences of applicants disclosing or revealing their political orientation. They also have potentially important implications for the promotion of diversity in organizations.