ERP Research On Discrimination Against Rural Migrant Worker In Labor Market

Rural migrant worker was the result of China's household registration system. Although this group had made great contribution to the development of city, sometimes they were not treated equally as urban worker. Rural migrant workers belonged to "the second labor market" which only had low-skill, low-treatment work. When some companies recruited new worker, they discriminated against rural migrant worker, for example, the treatment they offered to applicant depended on household registration. Discrimination against rural migrant worker undermined the fairness in our society and increased the income gap between urban and rural areas. This was not conductive to the stable development of society and the construction of "new countryside". In order to take measures to eliminate discrimination against rural migrant worker, it was necessary to explore the causes of discrimination.Household registration played an important role in affecting the equality in labor market, but we can not neglect that prejudice also affected treatment of rural migrant worker. At present, little researchers have pay attention to the prejudice hidden behind the discrimination. It is necessary to explore discrimination against rural migrant worker from the neural level.In this study, the prejudice toward rural migrant worker as research objective, using the experimental method and events related potential (ERP) as research tools, we design a experiment about rural migrant worker prejudice to study the neural manifestation of brain. Taking advantage of high resolution of the time (accurate to milliseconds) of ERP, the study focuses on the influence that prejudice plays on discrimination against rural migrant worker. We hope that through this research, we could give a underlying theoretical basis to resolve the labor market discrimination against rural migrant worker.With the help of spss, we analyzed the behavioral data and EEG data got from experiment. The series of research conclusions are as followings:(1) it took participants more time to categorize positive words after seeing words representing "Rural migrant workers" than "Urban workers". (2) ERP analysis revealed that "Rural migrant worker-positive" word pairs evoked larger N400 amplitude than "urban worker -positive" word pairs.The findings implicated that the rural migrant worker stereotype activation might be the key factor leading to the discrimination. The above results reveal the underlying neural mechanisms of discrimination against rural migrant worker. It would help us to understand deep-seated reason of discrimination and also provides us a new perspective to study of discrimination against rural migrant worker. On the basis of the above studies, this paper gives some suggestions to solve discrimination in the hope of establishing a fair and just labor market.