Study's results suggest DEI efforts by employers could be misguided
In a new study by Hebrew University (HU) in Jerusalem, a false impression of diversity is often created when people make incorrect assumptions about the true count of minorities around them.
The study — published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — showed that when students at HU were asked about the level of Palestinian Arabs, who are a minority ethnic group in Jerusalem and at the school, they almost inevitably got the true figures incorrect.
“We got astonishing results; we had to run the study a couple of times just to believe the results. The actual prevalence is 10 per cent and students think it’s around 30 per cent,” says Rasha Kardosh, a postdoctoral student who conducted the experiment, along with Asael Sklar, Alon Goldstein and Ran Hassin.
That initial piece was done without a control, says Kardosh, so the team also asked some Americans to estimate how many Black persons were in a photo grid. While the researchers randomly placed 25 per cent of the faces as African-Americans, the guesses averaged around 40 per cent, and this was the same for all participants.
“Their whole perception of the environment seems to be very biased, and it doesn’t matter if the participants herself is white American or Black American, left wing, right wing; none of these factors matter,” says Kardosh.
Overall, the group conducted 12 separate experiments with 942 participants.
Strong phenomenon
While the team expected to see these kind of results, it was the level of confirmation that was astonishing.
“It is rare to come across a phenomenon that is so strong because the effects themselves are big but also because most of us show it. From over 900 participants, 82 per cent show the effects, which basically means that we also have it — regardless of whether you were Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, white or Blacks or Arabs or Jews.... so that was really surprising,” says Ran Hassin, professor in the psychology department at the faculty of social sciences of HU.
But for the researchers, this is a result of a very basic trait of the cognitive system, which is that people tend to remember more things that are not the usual things that we see, according to Hassin.
“Individuals from minority groups are just that, they’re a minority, and so the cognitive system basically pays more attention to them and what happens is that we overestimate, not underestimate, the representation of minorities.”
While the team didn’t look into whether or not these assumptions were unconscious or not, “I’m very confident subjects do not know of the effect and do not know that it happens to them,” he says.
Another study found microaggressions lead to poor mental health outcomes for Black workers.
Impact on DEI efforts
This overestimation could lead to decreased support for diversity efforts, says the researchers.
“When you know the true number, you are aware about the level of racial disparities, and you’re less likely to be opposed to diversity-promoting policies, and we think that’s important. In real life, in many cases, people are not aware of the true number; they base their decisions and their attitudes on their perception of their environment,” says Kardosh.
For one diversity expert, the results are not all that surprising and confirm what has been going on in the corporate world for a long time.
“When we see someone who’s succeeded or has made their way into an organization, we tend to focus on that person’s achievements. We don’t think about the systemic inequity that has prevented many other people like them to get through. We tend to see them and then think, ‘Oh, they’re fine. Look at them, they’re a CEO,’” says Farzana Nayani, diversity specialist at Farzana Nayani Consulting and Training in Los Angeles.
Eare success stories are highlighted due to “exceptionalism,” which can mask the true makeup in organizations.
“There is perhaps an overrepresentation of minority groups at certain levels. In organizations, they tend to be at lower levels, not higher levels, and there’s study after study that shows a lack of representation of underrepresented individuals in the higher ranks, especially in senior leadership and executive levels,” says Nayani.
When organizations make an effort to hire more from underrepresented groups, this also can lead to employee “backlash” and incorrect perceptions of the workforce, she says.
“[Employees] may feel like ‘The last five people who were hired have been Black,’ but they don’t take into account the attrition of so many people who have left the company due to the lack of inclusion. I’m seeing that as a DEI consultant and I’ve seen that that cycle occur over and over again, where people are leaving because it’s not an inclusive environment, or they don’t have the belonging or support that they need.”
“You see a combination of all of those things happening and what that can lead to people thinking, ‘Oh, well, we have an abundance of minorities,’ when there are bigger deeper factors at play that are actually occurring at the same time,” she says.
For HR professionals, it’s a good idea to take a true measure of who is in the workplace, in order to act accordingly.
“For managers, it’s important because if you’re managing a small team, and you’re thinking of your hiring policies, if you’re basing your policies on your impression of your team, this impression might be biased so go ahead and count how many women you have, how many racial minorities you have, and base your hiring decision on these numbers and not on your general impression because it seems like likely to be biased,” says Kardosh.
Keeping a workplace free of discrimination starts at the beginning, when employers are recruiting people to join their teams.
Unintentional bias at play
Unconscious bias is often present in organizations, according to Nayani, and one of the reasons why is because of the recency effect.
“If someone had just had contact with someone on one conference call and then they apply that same perceptual bias to ‘Our company’s diverse,’ and then ‘I can name three people just in my immediate surroundings so, therefore, we’re diverse,’ that’s probably one of the factors here; there’s other biases that create that perceptual awareness that leads to the overestimation.”
“It’s interesting that this study came out because I am seeing it in the workplace and this actually gives us the neurological evidence that this is also occurring. It’s fascinating,” she says.
More than half (54 per cent) of employed Black Canadians say their prospects for getting a job have improved in the last 18 months.
