Scale dichotomization reduces customer racial discrimination and income inequality.

Abstract

Online platforms are rife with racial discrimination1, but current interventions focus on employers2,3 rather than customers. We propose a customer-facing solution: changing to a two-point rating scale (dichotomization). Compared with the ubiquitous five-star scale, we argue that dichotomization reduces modern racial discrimination by focusing evaluators on the distinction between 'good' and 'bad' performance, thereby reducing how personal beliefs shape customer assessments. Study 1 is a quasi-natural experiment on a home-services labour platform (n = 69,971) in which the company exogenously changed from a five-star scale to a dichotomous scale (thumbs up or thumbs down). Dichotomization eliminated customers' racial discrimination whereby non-white workers received lower ratings and earned 91 cents for each US dollar paid to white workers for the same work. A pre-registered experiment (study 2, n = 652) found that the equalizing effect of dichotomization is most prevalent among evaluators holding modern racist beliefs. Further experiments (study 3, n = 1,435; study 4, n = 528) provide evidence of the proposed mechanism, and eight supplementary studies support measurement and design choices. Our research offers a promising intervention for reducing customers' subtle racial discrimination in a large section of the economy and contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on evaluation processes and racial inequality.