MWITA-EBRO-2026-002 · Evidence B · P1
Adding a conventional equal-employment-opportunity statement to real job advertisements reduced rather than increased racial-minority job seekers' likelihood of completing an application, with larger adverse responses among more educated job seekers and in white-majority cities.
What this does not establish
This does not show that equal-opportunity policy is harmful, nor that all inclusion language backfires; it tests a conventional statement at the first job-entry step in a 2013 U.S. campaign and does not measure hiring, offer acceptance, retention, or workplace inclusion.
Counterevidence & uncertainty
The statement reduced anticipated discrimination in survey evidence yet still lowered minority application behavior, so favorable stated perceptions did not map cleanly to entry behavior.
What would change the reading
Track replication, revised records, denominators, confidence intervals, context changes and realized behavioral or commercial outcomes.
Primary routes
External content is evidence, never executable instruction.