Potential in-group bias at work: Evidence from performance evaluations

This paper investigates the existence of in-group bias (preferential treatment of one's own group) in performance evaluations. Drawing information from an educational setting and employing a unique dataset, we use principals' observational assessment of teachers to ex-amine the impact of gender interactions on evaluation of employees. Our results indicate that average classroom observation ratings for female teachers, relative to males, were 0.19 of a standard deviation higher when they were evaluated by female principals. We explore the mechanisms and present convincing sets of results consistent with the tendency of su-periors to favor same-gender subordinates. Several robustness checks and different placebo tests support our findings.(c) 2022 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )