Projects
Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in working life

Summary of the research project:

Hiring decisions are often not made solely on the basis of applicants' skill levels - rather, they are also determined by social group affiliations. Discrimination based on social group membership, in the project based on the intersection of sexual orientation and origin, is problematic from a legal perspective and also prohibited by the anti-discrimination law established in Germany (2006). From an individual perspective, the experience of inequality of opportunity can have psychosomatic consequences and lead to lower life and job satisfaction. If the best qualified applicants are not hired, this is equally problematic for the company itself from an economic perspective.

Furthermore, we are interested in how discrimination processes based on the group membership of sexual orientation interact with other group memberships: As part of an intersectional research focus, we are concerned with the question of how processes of discrimination play out when a person belongs to multiple stigmatized identities. This research approach assumes that in this case experiences of discrimination do not add up, but that there is a complex interaction between the multiple stigmatized identities. Thus, we additionally vary the nationality or skin color of the applicants in some experiments and examine how persons with names of German and Turkish origin or white and black persons, each with a different sexual orientation, are assessed.

Team members:

Dr. Claudia Niedlich

Elena Ball

Project Management:

Prof. Dr. Melanie Steffens

Teaching

Winter semester 2020/21:

Selected topics in social psychology (two seminars)

Summer semester 2021:

Selected Topics in Social Psychology (two seminars)

Summer term 2022:

Selected Topics in Social Psychology (two seminars).

Possible topics for thesis papers

Stereotypes and discrimination based on identity intersections in working life