People overestimate the presence of minorities around them, impeding equity and inclusion

Attempts to build a more equitable and inclusive society has taken a step forward with the discovery of a diversity illusion by a team of researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Their findings show that most people underestimate the presence of a minority in a social setting, and that this overestimation is made by the minority themselves. They found that this illusion is likely to hamper attempts to build a more equitable society, as it leads to less support for policies aimed at promoting diversity. Their findings were published in the journal PNAS.

The leader of the research team believes that their work has immediate and real-life implications. To counteract this bias, he suggests two things: The actual numbers of the minority need to be made known and people need to understand how they are affected by this cognitive bias. Hassin says that being aware of the diversity illusion is just the first step.

The majority of the students at the university are Jewish-Israeli and the minority is Palestinian-Israeli. The students were asked to recall instances of walking through the main hallway of the university and to estimate the number of Arab students there are. Jewish and Arab students gave different estimates.

At first, we couldn't believe the results, so we ran the same experiment several times. It was Dr. Kardosh who first suggested this project. She was surprised to find that it had never been researched before. She has been able to bring new perspectives to the field as a social psychologist from a minority group.

The first astonishing results were repeated in several other experiments, including one with American participants viewing a grid of 100 student faces, with 25% of African American faces randomly scattered among white ones. A vast overestimation of the minority was recorded by both white and African American participants.

The diversity illusion is explained by the fact that our cognitive system switches to what it doesn't expect. In a social setting, that focus can be on the minority group, and the shift of focus makes the event claim more importance in our perception and memories. She and Prof. Hassin will investigate how this affects our perception of other minorities.

More information: Rasha Kardosh et al, Minority salience and the overestimation of individuals from minority groups in perception and memory, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2116884119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Citation: People overestimate the presence of minorities around them, impeding equity and inclusion (2022, May 10) retrieved 10 May 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-05-people-overestimate-presence-minorities-impeding.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.