You might act like a bigot even if you don't have a prejudiced bone in your body, simply because you think everyone else is one.
April 15, 2026
Original Paper
Discriminating Because Others Might: Anticipating Third-Party Discrimination
SSRN · 6459339
The Takeaway
We usually think of discrimination as a result of personal hate or bias, but this study reveals a more subtle cause. People often discriminate against marginalized groups because they are 'predicting' that others will do the same. If you think the rest of the world will exclude someone, you might exclude them too just to avoid social friction. This creates a tragic self-fulfilling cycle where exclusion happens even in a room full of well-meaning people. It means that to stop discrimination, we don't just need to change individual hearts; we have to change our perception of what 'everyone else' thinks.
From the abstract
Research on discrimination typically focuses on people's unfavorable beliefs or preferences towards marginalized groups. At the same time, there is growing evidence that beliefs about third-party behaviors, independent of personally held attitudes or tastes, can have upstream consequences on decisions. In two preregistered experiments with online samples—a natural experiment using the 2024 U.S. presidential election and a controlled online experiment—I show that beliefs about third-party discrim