Reaction Qualifications in the Eyes of the People: An Experimental-Philosophical Study based on US Survey Data

Is it fair for employers to select candidates partly based on how the employers think customers react to the candidates’ appearances, that is, based on candidates’ reaction qualifications? Both philosophically (in the literature on wrongful discrimination) and empirically, this question has recently been getting attention. Here, we focus on a theory of unfair disadvantages emphasizing: (i) whether the possession of the appearance feature in question reflects choices on the part of the candidate, and (ii) whether the appearance feature in question reflects values or convictions of importance to the candidate. We scrutinize the theory by evaluating how well these factors map on to folk intuitions about wrongful discrimination using an experimental-philosophical approach and data from the US. We do so on the presumption that coherence with folk intuitions is one desideratum for a philosophical theory, and that attention should be given to potential discrepancies between philosophical theories and folk intuitions. Our central finding is that there is only general support for factor (i) in the American population. Our study also adds to the extant empirical literature on reaction qualifications that tend to focus on the employer’s side of the matter, not the candidate’s as we do.