Attitude Toward equality diversity and inclusion at work
Headcounts and equal opportunity 255
WHY EVEN MUNDANE SOCIAL CATEGORIES MATTER
The social categorization literature Turner et al., 1987; McGarty, 1999 has established that people attach emotional value to their social cat-
egory memberships Abrams and Hogg, 1988, 1999. In fact, more recent research suggests that it is especially dii cult for groups from dif erent
social categories, say an ‘American’ company versus a ‘French’ company, to maximize joint gains Garcia et al., 2005. For instance, Americans
would rather have less-lucrative equal outcomes for example, 500 – Americans 500 – French than more-lucrative but disadvantageously
unequal outcomes where the French earn more from a joint venture than themselves for example, 600 – Americans 800 – French. On the other
hand, if both companies were from the same social category that is, Americans, then people would be willing to maximize joint gains, even
if it means they will proi t less than the other company. Thus, the impli- cation is that group members will experience a greater pain of upward
social comparison when they are getting paid less than another group in inter-category situations that is, Americans versus French than in intra-
category situations that is, Americans versus Americans.
While actual group members become sensitive to inequalities in inter- category situations, third parties also become more sensitive to inequali-
ties in inter-category situations than intra-category ones Beggan et al., 1991; Garcia and Miller, 2007. Although third parties do not experience
the same pain of upward social comparison as actual group members do, Garcia and Miller show that third parties can certainly recognize
an af ective disparity – the ‘hedonic gap’ – that would arise between the winning and losing sides of an inter-category situation. Garcia and Miller
hypothesize that third parties will consequently become more averse to using winner-take-all solutions to resolve inter-category disputes than
intra-category ones, even when such winner-take-all outcomes are created by the fair toss of a coin see Elster, 1989, 1992; Blount, 1995; Bolton et
al., 2005.
To illustrate this point, Garcia and Miller conducted a series of decision- making studies about whether or not to resolve conl ict with winner-take-all
solutions. In one particular study, University of Michigan undergraduates were asked to read one of two conl ict situations. Participants in the intra-
category condition read the following:
The Class of 1994 is deciding where to host their class reunion. Six hundred alumni were asked to rank a list of seven possible hotels. As you can see below,
the alumni are divided on their i rst choice: half the alumni want the Marriott
256 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
and half the alumni want the Hyatt. In fact, as you can see below, they do not agree until their fourth choice, the Radisson Hotel.
Inspecting a table, participants saw the preference orders for both sides Marriot, Westin, Hyatt, Radisson, Hilton, Sheraton, and Doubletree
versus Hyatt, Doubletree, Marriot, Radisson, Westin, Hilton, and Sheraton. Participants in the inter-category condition read the same sce-
nario, except that now the dispute was between ‘in-state’ and ‘out-of-state’ alumni. All participants were asked, ‘If only the following options were
available, where should the reunion be held?’. The two options were a l ip a coin for their i rst choice Heads 5 Marriott, Tails 5 Hyatt; and
b choose the Radisson. Note that, actually, option b is a mutually less preferred hotel than the i rst choice of the other side.
Results showed that 84 percent of the participants in the intra-category condition chose to l ip a coin to resolve this dispute. However, only 58
percent of the participants did so in the inter-category condition, where they were more willing to choose the mutually less preferred, suboptimal
option b. The implication of this study as well as the other ones see Garcia and Miller, 2007 is that third-party observers are far more reluc-
tant to create inequalities in order to preempt a ‘hedonic gap’ or an af ec- tive disparity between the winning and losing sides of a coin toss, despite
the fact that tossing a coin is procedurally fair Blount, 1995; Bolton, et al., 2005. As we shall see, this concern for preempting a hedonic gap between
members of dif erent social categories has the potential to af ect how we determine rewards and to whom we grant opportunities.
HEADCOUNTS AND SOCIAL CATEGORY LINES
Building on the fact that third parties became reluctant to create inequali- ties along social category lines and that third parties even became averse
to resolving inter-category preference disputes with the procedurally fair toss of a coin, a recent theoretical development in distributive justice
Garcia and Ybarra, 2007 presents ‘people accounting’ – a hypoth- esis which posits that a simple numerical imbalance in representation
along even mundane social category lines can af ect third parties’ deci- sions on whom to reward and of er opportunities in highly competitive
situations.
Garcia and Ybarra provide evidence of people accounting by focusing on nominal social category lines, not merely the highly politicized social
categories of race and gender. For instance, in one study, undergraduates from the University of Michigan all read about a hypothetical scenario
Headcounts and equal opportunity 257
where the Association for Psychological Science was determining which graduate student to select for the best dissertation award. Participants
in the control condition were told: ‘For the past 10 years, none of the 10 winners have been graduate students from Stanford University’, whereas
participants in the people accounting condition were told: ‘8 of the 10 winners have been graduate students from Stanford University’. All par-
ticipants were then asked, ‘To what extent would you feel some pressure to avoid selecting a graduate student from Stanford? 1 5 no pressure at
all; 7 5 a lot of pressure’. Consistent with the people accounting hypothesis, results showed that
participants in the people accounting condition felt signii cantly more pressure to avoid selecting ‘Stanford’ graduate students compared to
those participants in the control condition. In this case, to the extent that Stanford students were an overrepresented social category, impartial
third-party observers began to feel more pressure to categorically deny them equal opportunity. A conceptually similar study asked participants
to choose whom they would recommend hiring as new faculty where the social category line was based on where the faculty candidate received his
her PhD. In a condition where participants were aware that many of the existing faculty received their PhD from ‘Berkeley’, the candidate from
‘Berkeley’ was chosen signii cantly less often. Again, to the extent that a social category is overrepresented that is, Berkeley, the winning chances
for a member from an overrepresented category will drop at the discretion of impartial third parties.
People accounting can also happen in the context of replacement, when impartial third parties are determining who should i ll a spot vacated by
a previous employee. To demonstrate this, Garcia and Ybarra 2007 asked participants to pick a replacement for a retiring high school teacher
whom participants were told was either an African American, leaving behind only one other African American teacher, or a Latino American,
leaving behind only one other Latino teacher. Participants then received two résumés from African American and Latino candidates and were
asked to recommend a replacement. Results showed that when the African American was retiring, 83 percent of the participants chose an African
American replacement. However, when the Latino American was retir- ing, 52 percent chose a Latino replacement and only 48 percent chose the
African American candidate. Although this study focuses on racial social categories, note that this analysis is far from any prototypical ‘ai rmative
action’ example. In this case, either African Americans or Latinos were categorically excluded, depending on their relative representation in the
social category context.
While people accounting can occur along a wide range of nominal
258 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
social category lines, people accounting is more likely to be triggered on a meaningful social category dimension versus a less meaningful one.
For instance, as additional i ndings suggest, people accounting is more likely to occur along a meaningful dimension such as ‘continent’ that is,
Europe versus Asia or ‘university’ that is, Alabama versus Auburn than a generally less meaningful one such as ‘handedness’ that is, right- versus
left-handed. However, it must also be emphasized that the meaningful- ness of any social category line is context specii c; to the extent that a given
social category dimension has greater relevance in a particular context, so too will it have even greater meaning. For instance, even ‘handedness’,
which seems rather vapid, can gain greater meaning if the context pertains to right- or left-handed batters, anglers, or handwriting desk test-takers.
Nevertheless, these empirical i ndings Garcia and Ybarra, 2007 reveal how headcounts along nominal social category lines have the potential to
af ect decisions in the workplace.
IMPLICATIONS FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN THE WORKPLACE
Although the empirical i ndings on people accounting are based on studies using the psychological decision-making methodology, they
undoubtedly shed light on how people often make decisions in the workplace. While we already know that not everyone in the workplace
will have an equal opportunity due to ingroup favoritism Turner et al., 1979, a situation in which fellow ingroup members are favored over
non-ingroup members for hiring or promotions, the present analysis explores the complementary perspective of impartial third-party deciders
and highlights the fact that not everyone may have an equal opportunity in the workplace if there is a perceived imbalance along social category
lines. For example, impartial decision makers in the organization might think that an employee of the year award could go to a person from
‘i nance’, ‘human resources’, or ‘marketing’. However, if they sud- denly become aware that a person from marketing has not been given
this honor in 10 years, then the award-winning chances of the market- ing person will greatly increase while those of the i nance and human
resources candidates will decrease.
In a related application, one may consider how people accounting might af ect the opportunity to serve in important public institutions such
as the US Supreme Court. The appointment process for positions on the Supreme Court begins when the President of the United States nominates
a candidate and then receives coni rmation from the Senate. At the present
Headcounts and equal opportunity 259
time, i ve of the nine justices on the Supreme Court are ‘Catholic’. If the President or the Senate were to recognize this social category line, namely
Catholic versus non-Catholic, then people accounting would predict that during the next nomination process the President and Senate would more
likely coni rm a non-Catholic to the Supreme Court than a Catholic. Of course, the implication is that prospective Catholic candidates will be cat-
egorically denied serious consideration, regardless of the impeccability of their judicial record or educational credentials.
Similar balancing acts could be seen with respect to the number of Eastern versus Western Europeans working at corporate headquarters,
the number of EU versus non-EU citizens on the board of an international company, or simply the number of males or females reporting to a manager.
In this last case, for instance, a manager could be concerned that there are not enough females or males reporting to her or him. Consequently,
opportunities to join the team could be inl uenced by the present gender composition of the team. However, managers must i rst recognize an
imbalance along gender lines in order to trigger people accounting, and there are undoubtedly individual dif erences in what people perceive as
an imbalance. For some managers, a 6040 percent spread of male to female employees could prompt them into people accounting mode, while
a 9010 percent spread might be necessary for other managers. Naturally, however, such imbalances are of set in occupations where a particular
social category dimension is highly skewed, such as among commercial pilots or nurses.
IMPLICATIONS FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICIES
Perhaps the most notable implication of the present analysis is that ai rm- ative action policies may have far deeper psychological roots. Detractors
from race- and gender-conscious employment policies have claimed that the identii cation of potential candidates with certain social categories
merely distracts employers from judging individual merit and are largely irrelevant to hiring decisions. However, the present analysis suggests
that competitive events that result in winner-take-all allocation decisions can trigger social category-based choice even when the social categories
themselves university ai liation, geographical location and so on are not gender or racial ones. While ai rmative action programs attempt to
rectify historical inequities as well as promote diversity, people accounting explains a much broader aversion to imbalances across social category
lines. This propensity to seek equitable solutions to intergroup conl icts
260 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
manifested within interpersonal allocation decisions is not merely a legacy of diversity-minded directives such as President Johnson’s Executive
Order 11,246 in 1965 which prompted the initiation of ai rmative action policies in the United States, but rather a basic tendency emerging from
social category-based choice.
This suggests that one possible avenue for those who wish to maintain the continuity of ai rmative action programs after unfavorable legisla-
tion or court decisions, such as the US Supreme Court decision in Gratz v. Bollinger 2003 that limited how diversity enhancing programs could
operate in assessing potential candidates or after the ‘25-year’ expected lifespan for the requirement of diversity programs suggested by Justice
Sandra Day O’Conner in the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case, would be to promote diversity programs as an enhancing supplement to the natural
propensity to create fair and equal distributions among members of a wide range of social category groups including, but more importantly
beyond, merely race and gender. This approach, which would empha- size how race- and gender-conscious programs arise organically from
natural feelings of empathy and justice, would of er a new way to extend a national dialogue concerning issues dealing with social categoriza-
tion and identity politics. By highlighting the widespread practice of people accounting beyond race and gender lines, it is possible that more
people would be willing to extend support to such programs, especially since race and gender are routinely associated with real dif erences in
economic power whereas other people accounting social category lines such as being ‘Catholic’ versus ‘non-Catholic’ or from ‘Princeton’ versus
‘Stanford’ are not.
Nevertheless, we must emphasize that people accounting does not always result in the i nal selection of members of underrepresented social
category groups. While people accounting is supported by a natural aver- sion to unequal distributions in social category representation, the process
itself relies upon an objective perspective and the ability to identify an imbalance in the resolution of conl icts along salient social category lines.
As long as decision makers do not or choose not to recognize a numerical imbalance between social categories, or are partial to one category in the
dispute, people accounting will not take place. In addition, research shows that such candidates might make it to a short list but not necessarily the
i nal selection Monin and Miller, 2001, as the process of short-listing often takes away feelings of prejudice and extinguishes any compunction
to make a i nal social category-based selection. However, people account- ing is possibly a more powerful predictor of the i nal selection along
nominal social category lines, which are arguably less prone to such ‘moral licensing’ ef ects.
Headcounts and equal opportunity 261
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Abrams, D. and Hogg, M.A. 1999, Social Identity and Social Cognition, Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Beggan, J.K., Platow, M.J. and McClintock, C.G. 1991, ‘Social interdepend- ence’, in R.A. Baron, W.G. Graziano and C. Stangor eds, Social Psychology,
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, pp. 394–423. Blount, S. 1995, ‘When social outcomes aren’t fair: the ef ect of causal attribu-
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