Welcome to Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Our goal is to make a positive impact on society by developing future leaders through our suite of undergraduate, MBA, and PhD degree programs, and our tailored non-degree courses; and by creating and disseminating impactful knowledge and insights.

Emory University, Goizueta Business School

New Row

Contact expert @[Full Name](fullname), @[Job Title](job_title) at @[Organization](organization) for media, speaking, professional opportunities and more.

@[Full Name](fullname) at @[Organization](organization) | Contact Form

Expert Inquiry

Open Sans

Honored in Atlanta Business Chronicle’s “30 under 30” list

Selected into LEAD Atlanta

Promising Young Scholar Research Excellence Award

Travel Grant Award, Dispute Resolution Research Center

Academy of Management : Member

PhD Project : Member

SPSP : Member

APS : Member

Measuring Racial Discrimination Remotely: A Contemporary Review of Unobtrusive Measures

What’s in a Name? The Hidden Historical Ideologies Embedded in the Black and African American Racial Labels

MOSAIC: A model of stereotyping through associated and intersectional categories

Composition and compensation: The moderating effect of individual and team performance on the relationship between Black team member representation and salary

A Review of Compensatory Strategies to Mitigate Bias

Reexamining the Link Between Economic Downturns and Racial Antipathy: Evidence That Prejudice Against Blacks Rises During Recessions

Black and blue: Exploring racial bias and law enforcement in the killings of unarmed black male civilians

Medium and Message: Globalization and innovation in the production field of Indian fashion

A rose by any other name?: The consequences of subtyping “African-Americans” from “Blacks”

Gender Profiling A Gendered Race Perspective on Person–Position Fit

Gender Matching 2.0: Gendered Demographic Groups and Positions in Person-Position Fit

Gendered races implications for interracial marriage, leadership selection, and athletic participation

The hubris penalty: Biased responses to “Celebration” displays of black football players

Gendered Races: Implications for Interracial Marriage, Leadership Selection, and Athletic Participation

Dr. Erika Hall, assistant professor of Organization and Management at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, focuses her research on the influence of race, gender, and class-based biases on interactions within the workplace and more broadly within society. Racial Bias in the Workplace Bias is an instance of prejudice and racial bias is an instance of prejudice based on a person’s race or perceived race. In the workplace, racial bias manifests in a number of ways such as lower wages, higher job loss, being passed over for a promotion, and so on. It is important to understand the difference between bias in the workplace versus an anomalous outcome versus a true deficiency in performance that led to an outcome. With a sample size of one, that determination may be difficult but Hall has looked at hundreds and sometimes thousands of people and companies in her research studies which enables her to identify trends in discrimination. Organizations can use control groups to evaluate whether or not an instance is due to racial bias. This means looking at a situation and determining if there was another person that had the same type of qualifications, who had the same résumé, would that person suffer the same outcomes as the Black person is right now. Hall says hiring biases are quite common. There are negative stereotypes associated with Black candidates regarding future performance. Many résumé studies show that bias is in play with hiring managers if the name on top of that résumé is perceived to be black versus white. In these studies, a fictitious résumé is created with all the qualifications necessary for a position. Two copies of the résumé ─ one version with a stereotypically Black or Asian or Latino name on it and the other a name that is stereotypically white ─ are submitted to actual companies for real positions. Even though it is an identical résumé except for the name at the top, the callback rate for candidates with names that are stereotypically Black or minority, in general, tends to be lower than for candidates with “White” names. Code-Switching Hall notes that it is not uncommon for people of color to change their name or go by their middle name in order to not be discriminated against when applying for a job. A study published in Administrative Science Quarterly suggested that both Black and Asian employees tend to change their names in a way that will make it whiter, a behavior known as résumé whitening. Making your name seem more “white” is related to code-switching or when a person adjusts their style of speech, appearance, behavior, or expression based on the setting they are in (home vs office, for example) or those who are around them. Hall says everyone has to code-switch to some degree between their personal and professional lives, but it seems to be more distinct and more disparate for Black Americans. Racial Bias Misconceptions The biggest misconception about racial bias in the workplace, says Hall, is that you have to be a racist to be biased. A racist is someone who is prejudiced against people on the basis of their racial or ethnic group.  If you don't hire someone who is Black because you are fearful that your customers would respond better to someone that is white, you have introduced racial bias into the hiring process, even though you personally may not hold any negative feelings toward Black people. Another example of racial bias can be found in the real estate industry. While companies that value homes for sale are bound by law not to discriminate, there are reports that it happens often. Homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods or homes that have evidence of Black owners (such as family photos) are appraised at lower rates than homes with white owners. Hall references an article in which a professional appraiser said that appraisers try to mirror the market. Buyers are less willing to purchase a home that was previously owned by a Black person and their valuation of the home reflects that. The appraisers may not be racist but they are contributing to discrimination and in doing so are disadvantaging Black home sellers. Black vs African American The terms Black and African American often are used interchangeably within the United States but there is a literal difference. Black refers to the entire diaspora of people with African heritage throughout the world, whereas African American refers to Black people within North America. In research conducted in 2015, Hall found that the stereotypes associated with the Black label were more negative, less competent, less warm, and lower socioeconomic status than the African American label. In one experiment, identical job application are submitted for a position with the exception that one candidate is identified as Black and the other candidate is identified as African American. The Black candidate is less likely to be hired and is perceived as lower in competence and lower status. Negative associations for the term Black versus African American are so common that they have become evident when doing Google Image searches. Hall conducted an experiment in which she Googled the term “Black people” and extracted the first 100 image results. Then, she immediately Googled the term “African American people” and extracted the first 100 image result. The image results for “Black people” were more negative, degrading, and stereotypical than the results for “African American people.” Policing and Racial Bias Hall has conducted research specifically exploring racial bias and law enforcement in the killings of unarmed Black males. She found that there were several stereotypes of Blacks that lead to higher rates of police force being used and higher tolerance among whites of force being used against Blacks. The first stereotype is that Black youth as adult-like. On average, whites perceive Black youth to be older than they are. This can lead to police using more force against a Black youth than their age warrants. The killing of 12-year old Tamir Rice is an example of this. The second a stereotypes of Blacks is that they are sub-human. Research by Emory University professor Melissa Williams showed that whites viewed Blacks as more ape-like than other whites. The more that someone had this association, the more they condoned police brutality against Blacks. The third stereotype is that Blacks are super-human, especially as it pertains to strength. Again, this can lead to excessive force being used against a Black person. Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, Missouri police officer who killed 18-year old Michael Brown, suggested in an interview that Brown was like Hulk Hogan and he had to resort to the use of extreme force to his super-human strength.  There are also stereotypes of Blacks as violent and Blacks as criminals. This leads to sub-conscious associations that can result in very detrimental outcomes for Blacks in their encounters with law enforcement. For example, in studies in police officers are shown white faces and Black faces with either a gun or cell phone on top of the face and must quickly assess threats, they more often mistake Black faces with cell phones as a threat. This relates to signal detection analysis, which is a tool that researchers use to measure how sensitive a shooter is toward shooting one group of people versus the other. So for example, the studies show that people tend to have a lower bar for shooting an unarmed Black man versus an unarmed white man, and they tend to do so at a quicker rate. Hall notes that racism is cultural and therefore it can be pervasive across society. Black police officers for example can be racist towards Black civilians. Some studies show that there is less of an implicit bias among Black police officers, but they hold some of the implicit biases that the white police officers do. More people and companies are looking seriously at the issue of racial bias and it permeates our personal and professional lives. Organizations are evening hiring researchers like Hall to analyze their practices and policies to identify areas of improvement.

Racial Bias is Everywhere

Erika V. Hall is an Associate Professor of Organization and Management at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. As a trained social psychologist, her research explores the powerful impact of stereotypes and the hidden content within them.

Hall earned a PhD in Management & Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Professor Hall's work has appeared in academic journals such as Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Psychological Science, and American Psychologist, and media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and NPR. In 2016, she was honored as one of the “The World’s Best 40 Under 40 Business Professors” in Poets & Quants. Prior to graduate school, Hall was a Research Associate at Harvard Business School.

Stereotyping

Implicit Bias

Race and Gender

Social Psychology

Personal Website

A couple that works full-time earns an extra five-figures each month from the 2 franchises they own. They explain 4 keys to creating passive income through franchise investing.

Bringing DEI into the core of our institutions

NFL referees penalize Black players for celebrating far more than white players

Meet the Fourth Class of our 40 under 40 Honorees

This Is How Everyday Sexism Could Stop You From Getting That Promotion

What’s in a Name? Black vs. African American

Harvard Business Review Erika Hall

How to Talk with Your Team About the Violence at the U.S. Capitol

Stop Giving Digital Assistants Female Voices

Armour: The real reason behind criticism of Cam Newton

The world only has ugliness for black women. That’s why Serena Williams is so important

At the intersection of race, gender and STEM

“It’s the Blackness that scares everybody”: Why white people favor “African-Americans”

According to a New Study, Blacks Are Losing Out to—Wait for It—African Americans

Whites view the term “African-American” more favorably than “black”

Bringing DEI into the Core of Our Institutions | INSEAD Knowledge

Opinion | This Is How Everyday Sexism Could Stop You From Getting That Promotion - The New York Times

How to Earn Passive Income Through Franchise Investing Strategy - Markets Insider

Faculty from various disciplines apply aspects of behavioral research to their work. Learn more about key research happening in this area. 

A Focus on BDI Research

Erika V. Hall

For business leaders engaged in negotiations, it’s essential to constantly analyze and revisit their negotiation strategy to avoid many of the errors typically made in the process. In the Handbook of Conflict Management Research, Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization & management, and coauthors Brian Lucas (U of Chicago) and Leigh Thompson (Northwestern U) offer a window into negotiation methods and some of the mistakes negotiators make along the way. The trio discovered and defined three specific errors that occur in negotiations, including what they label as domain myopia, the self-preoccupation effect, and the script hijack effect. Domain myopia is described as the “tendency for negotiators to fail to see meaningful parallels across negotiation situations that might appear different on the surface, but have meaningful underlying similarities.” Hall and her coauthors also describe the self-preoccupation effect, where negotiators let their emotions win the day and subsequently lose perspective. The third scenario that they define is the script hijack effect, which they describe as “the tendency for negotiators to feel compelled to follow a script, often based on stereotypes.” According to the authors, the problems they document apply across a variety of industries.

Why negotiations fail

What’s in a name? The powerful effects of labels for others and the self

Exploring the consequences of gendered race for person-role fit

Writing (and Talking) Differently about Diversity: Addressing the Normalization of Othering

A rose by any other name? “Blacks” are more negatively evaluated than “African-Americans.”

When you change your perspective you can change business for the better. Join us on Goizueta Effect to hear from leading faculty at the Goizueta Business School on the latest trends, research, and innovations in business, and find out how you can achieve more, do more, and create more in today’s ever-changing marketplace.

Goizueta Effect

research-reveals-uptick-in-hostility-toward-black-americans-during-tough-economic-times

Associate Professor of Organization & Management; Faculty Advisor, Business & Society Institute

Associate Professor of Organization & Management

Goizueta Experts Encourage Business Leaders to Double Down on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts. Do recessions stoke racial tension? When there’s an economic downturn, are White Americans more likely to feel distrust or even animosity towards their Black peers?
Researchers have long wondered about the broader societal impact of financial recessions, but until recently their effects on race relations have been unclear.

In a recent paper, Emily Bianchi, associate professor of organization and management, Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization and management, and Sarah Lee 19PhD, assistant professor of management, Dominican University of California and visiting professor of organizational behavior, Pepperdine University, find that there is indeed a subtle uptick in hostility towards Black Americans during bad economic times. Their paper, Reexamining the Link Between Economic Downturns and Racial Antipathy, examines publicly available data on attitudes, political trends, and behavioral patterns in the U.S.

Sarah Lee 19PhD  While businesses tend to cut diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts during economic downturns, Bianchi and Hall underscore that these efforts may be even more critical during these times.

To study this phenomenon, the researchers analyzed more than 20 years of data from the American National Election Survey (ANES), a biannual survey capturing political affiliations and perceptions of political candidates from 1964 until 2012. They analyzed how White Americans’ attitudes towards Blacks changed depending on the state of the economy and found that in worse economic times, Whites felt more negatively about Blacks.

As Bianchi notes: “we were able to analyze the responses of more than 30,000 individuals who identified as White. And we do find that for decades – between the 1960s and the first part of the 21 century – White Americans feel less warmly about Black Americans during times of financial hardship.”


 Emily Bianchi, associate professor of organization and management  In a second study, Bianchi, Hall, and Lee examined data from Project Implicit, a popular website that allows people to test their own implicit bias and also gauges racial attitudes. Again, the authors found that in worse economic times, White Americans held more negative implicit and explicit attitudes about race. In particular, during the Great Recession, they found that White’s attitudes towards Blacks became substantially more negative in states that were hard hit by the economic crisis compared to states in which the economic downturn was less severe.

Having established that economic conditions affected fluctuations in attitudes towards race, the authors then examined whether these emotional shifts translated into actual behavioral outcomes. In other words, if Whites felt more negatively towards Blacks during recessions would this mean that Black professionals were less likely to be successful when the economy floundered? They tested this possibility by looking at two domains of public activity: record sales and voting patterns.

First, they examined data from the Billboard Top 10 American songs between 1980 and 2014 and recorded the race of each musician who secured a Billboard hit. They found that in bad economic years, Black musicians were 90% less likely to have a top 10 hit, presumably because White consumers (by far the biggest consumer group during this period) were less likely to support them. Next, they examined the results of more than 8000 elections to the U.S. House of Representatives over the same period. They found that in bad economic times, Black politicians were 21% less likely to win elections.

Interestingly, the converse also appears to be true. In good times, Black musicians and politicians fared much better in the polls and the charts – pointing to a certain fluidity in attitudes, says Bianchi.

“Across these very different domains, studies, and sample sizes, we find the same consistent pattern: when times are tough, White Americans feel more animosity towards Black Americans and are less likely to support Black musicians or politicians. When things pick up, White Americans have more positive attitudes towards Black Americans and are more likely to endorse Black musicians and Black candidates.”

The authors attribute these effects to innate human feelings of fear in the face of threat. Economic threats or shocks tend to evoke uncertainty and fear about what is to come. This translates into greater distrust of others, particularly those perceived as different in some way. And it’s an effect, they argue, that should be very much on the radar of businesses and decision-makers.

 Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization and management  The research cites, “Anecdotally, we know that when times are good, organizations will tend to prioritize their efforts in the area of diversity and inclusion. But while this is critically important at all times, our research suggest that these efforts are probably even more important when times are tough.”

All of this points to a need to attend to these issues more acutely when there’s a downturn, says Bianchi. And she cautions that this is likely to be counterintuitive to most leaders, who are likely more inclined to sideline diversity efforts when the economy slides.

In terms of the current debate around race relations in the US, however, Bianchi stresses that the economic dimension is just one piece of a “very complicated puzzle.”

“What we have seen and are seeing in 2020 and 2021 is a confluence of many major factors: a pandemic that has put a lot of people out of work, and that has put everyone on edge, punctuated by some horrific and well documented instances of violence against Black citizens,” Bianchi says. “So many of these things are in the mixing pot, that it’s hard to pinpoint one specific cause behind the current race crisis in the U.S. So many things coming together at once that have put us in this moment.”

Only time will tell how this might play out compared to what we saw in the 80s and 90s, which were economic fluctuations rather than a complete drop off a cliff, she says. It will be more difficult to tease apart the effect of the economy versus the effect of the pandemic versus the effect of police violence on America’s race relations – a situation that Bianchi describes as a “cauldron of mess.”

That said, she stresses that for business leaders, now is a good time to double down on efforts to drive diversity and inclusion.

“I’d suggest leaders be especially mindful that at times of economic stress such as we are currently experiencing, there is a very real danger of heightened racial animosity.”

 We’ve attached a full article with even more advice and helpful information from our experts – but if you are looking to learn more or cover this topic, we can help.

All of our faculty are available to speak with media, simply click on either expert’s icon now – to book an interview today.




Research Reveals Uptick in Hostility toward Black Americans during Tough Economic Times

why-negotiations-fail

For business leaders engaged in negotiations, it’s essential to constantly analyze and revisit their negotiation strategy to avoid many of the errors typically made in the process. In the Handbook of Conflict Management Research, Erika Hall, assistant professor of organization & management, and coauthors Brian Lucas (U of Chicago) and Leigh Thompson (Northwestern U) offer a window into negotiation methods and some of the mistakes negotiators make along the way. The trio discovered and defined three specific errors that occur in negotiations, including what they label as domain myopia, the self-preoccupation effect, and the script hijack effect. Domain myopia is described as the “tendency for negotiators to fail to see meaningful parallels across negotiation situations that might appear different on the surface, but have meaningful underlying similarities.” Hall and her coauthors also describe the self-preoccupation effect, where negotiators let their emotions win the day and subsequently lose perspective. The third scenario that they define is the script hijack effect, which they describe as “the tendency for negotiators to feel compelled to follow a script, often based on stereotypes.” According to the authors, the problems they document apply across a variety of industries.

Source:  

African American or Black, Latinx or Hispanic — How do you know which labels to use to describe yourself and others? Business Professor Erika Hall shares research on the hidden stereotypes embedded in racial labels. By bringing these associations to light, she suggests ways to honor someone’s cultural identity while mitigating potential bias. Learn effective strategies to navigate uncomfortable situations by feeling confident about which labels to choose. 

Erika V. Hall is an Associate Professor of Organization and Management at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. As a trained social psychologist, her research explores the powerful impact of stereotypes and the hidden content within them. Hall earned a PhD in Management & Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Professor Hall's work has appeared in academic journals such as Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Psychological Science, and American Psychologist, and media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and NPR. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

The history behind racial stereotyping | Erika Hall | TEDxColumbiaUniversity

Business education has been an integral part of Emory University’s identity since 1919. That kind of longevity and significance does not come without a culture built on success and service. Emory University’s Goizueta Business School offers a unique, community-oriented environment paired with the academic prestige and rigor of a major research institution. Goizueta develops business leaders of today and tomorrow with an undergraduate degree program, Full-time MBA (Two-Year MBA & One-Year MBA), Evening MBA, Executive MBA, full-time and part-time MS in Business Analytics, Master of Finance, Master in Management, Master in Business for Veterans, Doctoral degree, and a portfolio of non-degree Emory Executive Education courses. Together, the Goizueta community strives to solve the world’s most pressing business problems. The school is named for the late Roberto C. Goizueta, former Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company. For more information, visit goizueta.emory.edu.

Emory University is recognized internationally as an inquiry-driven, ethically engaged, and diverse community whose members work collaboratively for positive transformation in the world through courageous leadership in teaching, research, scholarship, health care, and social action. The University consists of an outstanding liberal arts college, highly ranked professional schools, and one of the larger and more comprehensive healthcare systems in the Southeast.

Meet Professor Erika Hall

OAM 432 Negotiations - Erika Hall

Select Inquiry Type