Majority members misperceive even “win-win” diversity policies as unbeneficial to them

Resumen

Six studies show that majority members misperceive diversity policies as unbeneficial to their ingroup, even when policies benefit them. Majority members perceived non-zero-sum university admission policies—policies that increase the acceptance of both URM (i.e., underrepresented minority) and non-URM applicants—as harmful to their ingroup when merely framed as “diversity” policies. Even for policies lacking a diversity framing (i.e., “leadership” policies), majority members misperceived that their ingroup would not benefit when policies provided relatively greater benefit to URMs, but not when they provided relatively greater benefit to non- URMs. No consistent evidence emerged that these effects were driven by ideological factors: Majority members’ misperceptions occurred even when accounting for self-reported beliefs around diversity, hierarchy, race, and politics. Instead, we find that majority group membership itself predicts misperceptions, such that both Black and White participants accurately perceive non-zero-sum diversity policies as also benefiting the majority when participants are represented as members of the minority group.

Áreas y palabras clave

Cómo citar (APA 7)

Brown, N. D., & Jacoby-Senghor, D. S. (2021). Majority members misperceive even “win-win” diversity policies as unbeneficial to them. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000372