DFG-project on algorithm acceptance granted

My DFG-project “Egocentric biases meet biased algorithms” has been granted – job ad for a PhD position coming soon!

Group discrimination by algorithms often gets media attention when scandalous discrimination cases are revealed, such as the hiring AI by Amazon that disadvantaged women. What gets far less attention is that the people who judge the fairness of algorithms and evaluate the acceptance of (biased) algorithmic decision-making might be biased, too. We know from social-psychological research that people tend to favor the fairness rule with which they are better off (= higher outcome favorability) in situations where different fairness rules can be applied, a so-called egocentric bias. Existing studies on algorithmic fairness largely ignored such motivational biases. The project aims to examine this interplay between egocentric and algorithmic biases in a series of experiments.