Do African Americans overreport or underreport their experiences of discrimination? Evidence from list experiments

Abstract Discrimination is one of the largest barriers that immigrants and racial/ethnic minorities face in contemporary society. Social scientists have developed and applied field experimental methods to detect the existence and prevalence of discrimination in various domains. In addition, researchers have utilized questionnaires to directly ask discrimination victims about their experiences and the frequency of discrimination they encounter. However, self-reports of discrimination may be biased due to judgment errors in attributing mistreatment to discrimination and intentional overreporting (vigilance) or underreporting (minimization) of discrimination. In this study, we propose a two-stage model that distinguishes between these judgment and reporting biases. We argue that vigilance and minimization stem from sensitivity concerns. We conducted a list experiment with African American respondents who asked about their experiences of employment and everyday discrimination. Comparing the list experiment and direct question estimates, we find no evidence of systematic underreporting or overreporting of employment discrimination. For everyday discrimination, we find overreporting concentrated among ideologically liberal African Americans. These results provide new insights into biases in self-reported discrimination and suggest researchers should be attentive to the conditions under which these biases arise.