SHOULD YOUR WORKPLACE OFFER DIVERSITY TRAINING?

With so much discussion of diversity, equity, and inclusion, particularly school and workplace trainings, I thought I would see what I could find on these themes within psychology, behavioural science, and sociology literatures. What I found was surprising. Here is a sample:

Our ability to test or manipulate implicit bias is suspect:

Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., Klick, J., Mellers, B., Mitchell, G., & Tetlock, P. E. (2009). Strong claims and weak evidence: reassessing the predictive validity of the IAT. Journal of applied Psychology, 94(3), 567.

• Scholars assess key studies exploring links between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior commonly invoked to support strong claims about the predictive validity of the Implicit Associations Test. Test scores are not found to predict individual behaviour; patterns of behaviour were more consistent with pro-Black bias than anti-Black bias.

Carlsson, R., & Agerström, J. (2016). A closer look at the discrimination outcomes in the IAT literature. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 57(4), 278-287.

• IAT meta-analysis suggests weak correlation, near zero, between test results and bias. Study cautions against practical applications of the IAT.

Lai, C. K., Skinner, A. L., Cooley, E., Murrar, S., Brauer, M., Devos, T., ... & Nosek, B. A. (2016). Reducing implicit racial preferences: II. Intervention effectiveness across time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(8), 1001.

• Of 18 interventions studied only half were effective at manipulating implicit preferences and none with lasting impact, typically not even days but mere hours.

Oswald, F. L., Mitchell, G., Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., & Tetlock, P. E. (2013). Predicting ethnic and racial discrimination: a meta-analysis of IAT criterion studies. Journal of personality and social psychology, 105(2), 171.

• “This closer look at the IAT criterion studies in the domains of ethnic and racial discrimination revealed, however, that the IAT provides little insight into who will discriminate against whom, and provides no more insight than explicit measures of bias. The IAT is an innovative contribution to the multidecade quest for subtle indicators of prejudice, but the results of the present meta-analysis indicate that social psychology’s long search for an unobtrusive measure of prejudice that reliably predicts discrimination must continue.”

Diversity and anti-discrimiantion trainings were imposed before impact or effectiveness was determined:

Kalev, A., Dobbin, F., & Kelly, E. (2006). Best practices or best guesses? Assessing the efficacy of corporate affirmative action and diversity policies. American sociological review, 71(4), 589-617.

• “The antidiscrimination measures we study have become popular among employers, HR managers, lawyers, and advocacy groups, despite the absence of hard evidence that they work. Employers use these practices to defend themselves in court, and the courts, in many cases, accept them as good faith efforts to stamp out discrimination. There are reasons to believe that employers adopt antidiscrimination measures as window dressing, to inoculate themselves against liability, or to improve morale rather than to increase managerial diversity.”

Naff, K. C., & Kellough, J. E. (2003). Ensuring employment equity: Are federal diversity programs making a difference?. International Journal of Public Administration, 26(12), 1307-1336.

• Little evidence was found to suggest diversity programs have created more equitable workplaces for women or people of colour.

Paluck, E. L., & Green, D. P. (2009). Prejudice reduction: What works? A review and assessment of research and practice. Annual review of psychology, 60, 339-367.

• “In terms of size, breadth, and vitality, the prejudice literature has few rivals. Thousands of researchers from an array of disciplines have addressed the meaning, measurement, and expression of prejudice. The result is a literature teeming with ideas about the causes of prejudice. … Notwithstanding the enormous literature on prejudice, psychologists are a long way from demonstrating the most effective ways to reduce prejudice. Due to weaknesses in the internal and external validity of existing research, the literature does not reveal whether, when, and why interventions reduce prejudice in the world.”

Training often fails to reduce discrimination or harassment, result in greater intergroup cohesion, or improve employee productivity:

Dobbin, F., & Kalev, A. (2018). Why doesn't diversity training work? The challenge for industry and academia. Anthropology Now, 10(2), 48-55.

• Human resources policies to reduce discrimination and promote diversity seem to backfire. “[H]hundreds of studies dating back to the 1930s suggest that anti-bias training doesn’t reduce bias, alter behavior, or change the workplace.” Common features of diversity training (discrimination and fairness framing, mandatory participation, and legal or government mandates) appear to have a negative impact.

Dobbin, F., Schrage, D., & Kalev, A. (2015). Rage against the iron cage: The varied effects of bureaucratic personnel reforms on diversity. American Sociological Review, 80(5), 1014-1044.

• Some popular bureaucratic reforms thought to quell discrimination (such as programs to control managerial bias) instead often activate it. Some of the most effective reforms (like transparency in hiring and promotion) remain rare.

Dobbin, F., Kalev, A., & Kelly, E. (2007). Diversity management in corporate America. Contexts, 6(4), 21-27.

• “Three of the four most popular programs—diversity training, evaluations, and network programs—have no positive effects in the average workplace. The two least popular initiatives, mentoring and diversity managers, were among the most effective.”

Folz, Christina (2016). No Evidence That Training Prevents Harassment, Finds EEOC Task Force. Society for Human Resource Management.

• “The biggest finding of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC’s) Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace may be what it failed to find—namely, any evidence that the past 30 years of corporate training has had any effect on preventing workplace harassment.”

Legault, L., Gutsell, J. N., & Inzlicht, M. (2011). Ironic effects of antiprejudice messages: How motivational interventions can reduce (but also increase) prejudice. Psychological Science, 22(12), 1472-1477.

• “We suggest that many organizational strategies aimed at prejudice reduction are actually counterproductive, and our results provide a possible explanation for the finding that, despite the billions of dollars spent annually on prejudice-reduction interventions (Hansen, 2003), prejudice is rarely reduced.”

Robb, L. A., & Doverspike, D. (2001). Self-reported proclivity to harass as a moderator of the effectiveness of sexual harassment-prevention training. Psychological Reports, 88(1), 85-88.

• “[S]exual harassment-prevention training had a small negative effect on the attitudes of males with a high proclivity to harass.”

Worse still, mandatory training appears to have unintended negative repercussions:

Bingham, S. G., & Scherer, L. L. (2001). The unexpected effects of a sexual harassment educational program. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 37(2), 125-153.

• “The typical assumption is that some kind of action is better than no action at all, but our results suggest that this assumption is wrong and potentially dangerous. As Grundmann et al. (1997) contend, ineffective sexual harassment programs may be particularly harmful because they can meet an institution’s burden of doing something about the problem without actually affecting the problem in a positive way.”

Kulik, C. T., Pepper, M. B., Roberson, L., & Parker, S. K. (2007). The rich get richer: Predicting participation in voluntary diversity training. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 28(6), 753-769.

• Women, older employees, and racialized peoples were anticipated to be more enthusiastic for and likely to participate in diversity training, as they would perceive personal benefit. Trainee demographics did not predict embrace or avoidance of trainings. Voluntary diversity training is more likely to attract the trainees who have the least need of training from any demographic.

In fact, if anything, training seems to reinforce bias:

Kulik, C. T., Perry, E. L., & Bourhis, A. C. (2000). Ironic evaluation processes: Effects of thought suppression on evaluations of older job applicants. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 21(6), 689-711.

• “These results suggest that organizational diversity training including instructions to suppress stereotypic thoughts may have detrimental effects on evaluations of non-traditional job applicants…”

Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., Milne, A. B., & Jetten, J. (1994). Out of mind but back in sight: Stereotypes on the rebound. Journal of personality and social psychology, 67(5), 808.

• “Many have assumed that the key to prejudice reduction lies in the controlled inhibition of stereotypical thought (Devine, 1989; Fiske, 1989). Although this may indeed be true, we have identified some surprising costs that may be associated with this process—costs that apparently derive from the act of suppression itself. As a consequence of postsuppression rebound effects, formerly unwanted stereotypic thoughts were shown to return and impact on perceivers' treatment of a stereotyped target.”

Further, diversity programs and implicit bias trainings may worsen biases:

Brady, L. M., Kaiser, C. R., Major, B., & Kirby, T. A. (2015). It's fair for us: Diversity structures cause women to legitimize discrimination. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 57, 100-110.

• “Together, these experiments demonstrate that diversity structures can make it difficult for women to detect and remedy discrimination, especially women who hold benevolent sexist beliefs.”

Dobbin, F., & Kalev, A. (2016). Why diversity programs fail. Harvard Business Review, 94(7), 14.

• “Strategies for controlling bias—which drive most diversity efforts—have failed spectacularly since they were introduced to promote equal opportunity. … The problem is that we can’t motivate people by forcing them to get with the program and punishing them if they don’t. The numbers sum it up. Your organization will become less diverse, not more, if you require managers to go to diversity training, try to regulate their hiring and promotion decisions, and put in a legalistic grievance system.”

Dover, T. L., Major, B., & Kaiser, C. R. (2014). Diversity initiatives, status, and system-justifying beliefs: When and how diversity efforts de-legitimize discrimination claims. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 17(4), 485-493.

• “While these initiatives are commonly assumed to have positive effects for both companies and employees (Cox & Blake, 1991), surprisingly little research has examined their effects on perceptions of organizations and their employees. … [D]iversity initiatives (defined as messages that communicate a company’s support for diversity) may legitimize a company’s treatment of low-status minorities and increase derogation of minorities who claim they are victims of discrimination…”

Kaiser, C. R., Major, B., Jurcevic, I., Dover, T. L., Brady, L. M., & Shapiro, J. R. (2013). Presumed fair: Ironic effects of organizational diversity structures. Journal of personality and social psychology, 104(3), 504.

• “Despite the widespread prevalence of diversity structures and initiatives in U.S. organizations, surprisingly little is known about whether these diversity structures actually help organizations address discrimination and benefit underrepresented groups. … Our research suggests that when companies flout their diversity credentials, they may actually convince others (Experiments 1–5) and themselves (Experiment 6) that discrimination claims against them are unfounded, despite the lack of any evidence that their diversity policies are effective.”

And diversity training may do a lot to reduce workplace morale:

Dover, T. L., Major, B., & Kaiser, C. R. (2016). Members of high-status groups are threatened by pro-diversity organizational messages. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 58-67.

• “This suggests that even subtle, inclusive, and non-controversial forms of diversity messages—messages that indicate that a company values all types of people—can be experienced by members of high-status groups as threatening. Many companies in the US specifically design their diversity messages so that they reflect many forms of diversity beyond race or gender—such as diversity of experience, background, and expertise. … More research needs to address the downstream consequences of diversity policies and perceived discrimination among high-status groups, particularly regarding their effects on attitudes and behaviors toward lower-status groups.”

Plaut, V. C., Garnett, F. G., Buffardi, L. E., & Sanchez-Burks, J. (2011). “What about me?” Perceptions of exclusion and Whites' reactions to multiculturalism. Journal of personality and social psychology, 101(2), 337.

• “Concerted efforts by organizations to bolster and embrace diversity through the use of various diversity programs and structures may create the unintended consequence of simultaneously repelling their White, or dominant group, constituency. Without adequate buy-in from these organizational members, attempts at launching diversity initiatives (in which significant resources have often been invested) will likely be met with resistance, especially if a sense of inclusion is not fostered.”

Sanchez, J. I., & Medkik, N. (2004). The effects of diversity awareness training on differential treatment. Group & Organization Management, 29(4), 517-536.

• “As suggested by others (Morrison, 1992; Rynes & Rosen, 1995), diversity-related conflict might not be explained primarily by lack of awareness. Discussions of demographic trends, social perception theories, and even the experiential exercises carried out in diversity training sessions might be insufficient to bring about the posttraining behavioral change sought by proponents of diversity management. … Our interviews also hinted that, in the absence of posttraining coaching, trainees did not have a proper forum to vent their concerns. As a result, some chose to make public comments against the training program, whereas others decided to confront those whom they perceived responsible for their training nomination. Proven posttraining practices such as behavioral coaching and follow-up sessions, which are often necessary to achieve transfer from the training room to the job, might have prevented training backlash (Baldwin & Ford, 1988; Cox, 1993; Komaki et al., 1980; Rasmussen, 1996).”

At the least, it seems anyone engaged in this stuff must be very cautious around both testing for implicit bias and then doubly cautious with what is done with testing results. And, if it were my business or institution, I would only bring in leading psychologists and folks can demonstrate an expert-level understanding of this literature. Even then, there is so much potential for harm apparent in the above research, I feel this sort of thing may be best avoided altogether and not employed, certainly as a preemptive measure to help foster an inclusive or more cohesive workplace. Especially if attendance is required, the impact seems far more likely to be closer to the undoing of existing positivity and good-will. Clearly, more research needs doing.