MAY 2007
How You Phrase Affirmative Action Policy Affects People’s Reaction
by Marguerite Rigoglioso
Individuals may oppose affirmative action because they’re more worried about disadvantaging the group they feel part of than about benefiting a minority group, says Brian Lowery, associate professor of organizational behavior.
In one study, white American college students were asked how much they would support four different affirmative actions policies and how they thought each would affect whites versus ethnic minorities. The policies included 1) hiring a minority person, even if a white person were more qualified; 2) hiring a minority as a “tiebreaker” when two candidates were equally qualified; 3) providing training to minority applicants to help them become better qualified, but not basing hires on race; and 4) focusing on increasing minority applicants, but not basing hires on race.
Lowery found that the more whites felt the policy helped minorities, the more they were willing to support it—but only when they thought it would not hurt members of their own group. “It appears from these results that people can separate out the issues of helping minorities and hurting whites, showing that racism isn’t always the issue,” he says.
A second study looked at how responses differed depending on how they affected white and black Americans. One group was told the policy had reduced white employees from 90 to 82 percent of the company’s workforce. The other group was given the same information, but was told the policy had increased the number of black employees from 5 to 13 percent.
The higher participants scored on white-group identity measures, the less supportive they were of the affirmative action policy they saw as reducing the percentage of white employees. In contrast, individuals in the group that was told how the policy benefited blacks did not show differences in their response to the policy based upon how white-group identified the individuals were. In a third and related study, when participants were told that white employment remained entirely unaffected by the new policy, they also supported it regardless of how white-group identified they were.
Extrapolating from the results, Lowery says, “White people may say, and believe, they’re not supporting affirmative action because it creates inequities, but in many cases the reason they think it’s unfair is because they think it’s hurting their group.” What’s missing, he says, is the recognition that in some situations one group’s disadvantage is another group’s advantage. Reducing unfair discrimination against blacks will increase their representation and simultaneously reduce the representation of whites.
Lowery’s studies have important implications for managers interested in adopting affirmative action policies. “It’s important how you frame the policies to your constituents,” he says. “If you present them as somehow hurting whites and white males, you’re going to get less support than if you present them as benefiting minorities.”
“Concern for the In-Group and Opposition to Affirmative Action,” Brian S. Lowery, Miguel M. Unzueta, Eric D. Knowles, and Phillip Atiba Goff, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2006.
