Why a guy named Kevin Li got the apartment you both wanted to rent
Roy Antal / Postmedia News filesLooking to land a rental property? If your name is Kevin Li, you’ll have a better chance at success than if it’s Mark Anderson, Luis Garcia or Tyrone Johnson.
Men with Asian-sounding names get better online responses from landlords than other man, says a new study
Looking to land a rental property? If your name is Kevin Li, you’ll have a better chance at success than if it’s Mark Anderson, Luis Garcia or Tyrone Johnson.
So suggests a new Journal of Applied Social Psychology study in which males with Asian-sounding names saw more positive online responses from landlords than males with white, Hispanic or African American-sounding names. Among women, white and Asian-sounding names opened the most doors, followed by Hispanic and African-American ones.
And across all four ethnicities, women fared better than men when electronically inquiring about a rental apartment.
“A combination of ethnic and gender stereotypes appears to lead landlords to prefer certain kinds of people to others as renters,” said Allyson J. Weseley, co-author of the study. “White women and Asian women appear to have the best chance, followed by Asian men.”
Online inquiries were sent to nearly 1,600 landlords advertising rental properties in a variety of neighbourhoods. The messages were uniform, save for the name of the sender, which was manipulated to imply a particular ethnicity (names were based on the U.S. Census’ record of the most common names by race).
Among males, prospective tenants with Asian-looking names received the highest proportion of positive responses, at 45.2%. Hispanic and white-sounding names followed at 34.7% and 34.0%, respectively, while the African-American name saw the least success, at 16%.
This builds on a 2006 Journal of Applied Social Psychology study in which white renters received preferential treatment over black renters.
“Our findings suggest that once you throw an Asian-American and a Latino into the mix, the preference is for Asians, with whites and Latinos falling somewhere in the middle,” said Ms. Weseley, a behavioural science teacher with degrees from Princeton, Harvard and Columbia University.
“The kinds of stereotypes people have about white men are that they’re loud and boisterous and aggressive compared to, say, Asian men, who are stereotyped to be more well-mannered and timid.”
Female names’ positive responses were higher than those of males (40.8% versus 27.1%), with white and Asian women’s names seeing the most success (67.3% and 60.8%, respectively), and Hispanic and African-American names seeing the least (43.1% and 41.2%).
The researchers also uncovered evidence that tenants are likelier to win over landlords when their race matches that of the neighbourhood’s profile (such as a black tenant in a predominantly black suburb), but Ms. Weseley said a larger sample would be needed to tease that out.
Taken together, study co-author Michelle Feldman said the findings demonstrate that modern society is far from post-racial.
“Discrimination is still there — even if it’s subconscious, even if it’s just stereotypes associated with someone’s name — and it does affect people’s opportunities and what they have access to,” said Ms. Feldman, who’s currently studying at Cornell University.
In fact, the name effect appears to be so powerful that Ms. Weseley said it makes compelling case for using a generic email address and sign-off in online introductions.
“It’s sad but you may need to make first contact without giving away your ethnicity, or even gender,” said Ms. Weseley. “I may really want to be the most even-handed, open-minded landlord, but unconsciously as I scroll through [potential renters], I might stereotype.”
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