People and Diversity

- Plural cities outiside London are emerging in England 

        - Plural city - city in which no ethnic group is in the majority

- Ethnic diversity has grown since 1991: 20% of England's pop. is non-white British

- Migration is common in countries like Germany (13.1%) and the UK (10.4%)

- Great development from segregation to more mixing in the past 10 years 

     - England: Ethnic minority groups have grown and become more evenly spread since 2001

     -Manchester: 59% White British & 41% other ethnic groups - very close to becoming a plural city

- Constrict theory (Putnam, 2007): trust and tolerance are lower in ethnically diverse areas 

- Contact theory (Allport, 1954): ethnic contact is associated with higher trust and tolerance

- Difference measures of diversity and levels of analysis 

- Contact theory: meaningful contact in interactions within diverse groups

 - Constrict theory: diversity at community and societal level

Hewstone (2015)

- Considering the impact of neighbourhood or school-level ethnic diversity on attitudes towards outgroups: no evidence to support Putnam's (2007) pessimistic claims 

- Diversity = opportunity for contact 

- if contact positive, then diversity drives more positive attitudes 

- Problems: intergroup conflict, life in seperate communities

Berry's Acculturation Model 

- Assimilation: To develop relationships with larger society and to not maintain own culture

- Marginalisation: To not develop relationships with larger society and not maintain own culture 

- Seperation: To not develop relationships with larger society and maintain own culture

- Integration: To develop relationships with larger society and maintain own culture

- Acculturation: immigrants must resolve potential conflicts between their original cultural identity and a new, host nation identity. (Berry & Annis, 1974)

- Negative reactions to diversity (e.g., because of discrimination): accultrative stress

- Adpatation and overcoming acculturative stress: integrative stratergy

- Less stereotyping and confirmatory biases, more tolerant attitudes (Lorenzo-Hernandez,1998)

- Understand conflicting cultural assumptions (Bhawuk & Brislin, 1992)

- Biculturals more likely to explain behaviours by identifying multip;es casues (environment, constitutional, psychological) (Gutierrez & Sameroff, 1990)

- Better academic performance and self-efficacy (Buriel et al., 1998)

- More complex descriptions of 2 cultures (Benet-Martinez et al., 2006)

Being Multicultural: immigrants, biculturals 

    - Stress: concern about being discriminated against 

    - Member of social catergories that are sterotypically inconsistent

Percieving multicultural others: host society members 

    - Stress: feeling threatened -> increase discrimination

    - Percieve social catergories that are sterotypically inconsistent 

2 Diversity ideologies:

- Colour-blindness: identity blindness/ignoring group differences

      - Minimises the use and signficance of racial group membership, focus on similarities 

      - Race should not and does not matter 

- Multiculturalism: identity consiousness/celebrating group differences

      - Group membership matters and should be acknowledged, respected, and even valued 

      - Dicuss and consider role of cultural background 

Colour-blindness:

- We all have to work hard to support racial equality 

- Focus is on how we are similar not how we are different, to show we are all the same and race is not important 

Multiculturalism:

- We all have to work hard to support racial equality 

- Focus is on how we are different and that we can all appreciate those differences. Race is important because our racial differences make each of us special.

- Can decrease individuals' sensitivity to racism and discrimination

- Negative implications for:

     - Interracial interactions 

     - Minorities' perceptions and outcomes 

     - Pursuit of diversity and inclusion in organisational contexts 

- Highly identified Whites are especially threatened by multiculturalism 

- Less implicit and explicit prejudice 

- More positive interactions 

- Perspective taking 

- Greater engagement from minority employees in workplaces with multicultural attitudes 

- Ethnic and racial minorites tend to endorse multiculturalism more than do majority groups 

- While multiculturalism generally has more psoitive implications for people of colour, both models have the potential to further inequality

      - Multiculturalism backfires when: Whites feel social identity threat that leads to intergroup bias, it creates illusion of nondiscrimination

- Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986): Maintain positive social identity by comparing the status of their groups to that of other groups

- Group status threat predicts increased outgroup discrimination (Branscombe & Wann, 1994)

- Integrated threat theory (Stephan & Stephan, 2000): increasing diversity poses a threat to the majority group as an increase in minorities represents a real threat to resources as well as symbolic threat, which increases prejudice against immigrants 

- Social cognition theory (Jost et al., 2003): ethnic diversity leads to uncertainty and fear, which in turn leads to more conservative potitical policies. 

Major, Blodorn & Blascovich, 2018

- 450 White Americans 

- Task: Read press release 

      - Racial shift condition: racial minorities will outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the US by 2042

      - CG: geographic mobility is increasing 

- DVs: 

       - Group status threat

       - Support for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates 

       - Anti-immigrat attitudes 

       - Opposition to political correctness 

        - Ethnic identification

White Americans high in ethnic identification:

- Increased support for Trump and anti-immigration policies 

- Increased opposition to political correctness norms

- Decreased support for Sanders

- Increased group status threat

White Americans low in ethnic idenitfication: 

- Less positive towards Trump

-Increased support for PC norms 

Adapting to social and cultural diversity can have positive psychological and behavioural outcomes.

Catergorisation-processing-adaptation-generalisation (CPAG) model (Crisp & Turner, 2011)

- Catergorisation conditions 

- Processing conditions 

- Adaptation

- Generalisation

- Diversity must be experienced in a way that challenges stereotypes

- People must be motivated and able to engage in the inconsistency-resolution process, then adaptation will occur 

- The inconsistency resolution is a resource demanding and reults in an individuated impression

- With multiple diversity experiences and repeated engagement of inconsistency resolution, people will show generalised cognitive felxibility across multiple domains of judgement and behaviour.

Vezzali et al., 2016

- Beneficial effects of diversity for creativity (Crisp & Turner, 2011)

- Social catergorisation perspective on diversity: similarities and differences between group members, that are used to catergorise self and others into "us" and "them" can disrupt the beneficial effect of social diversity (Turner et al., 1987)

- Does engaging with cultural diversity increases creativity among school children?

- 149 Italian elementary school children, once a week for 3 weeks 

- 2 (Diversity: present vs. absent) x2 (Mindset: divisional vs. communal) between-participants experiemental design 

- Cooperative task (3-6 children): imagine impersonating characters from a fictional planet

- Condition: working group

      - Diversity present: Italian and immigrant children

      - Diversity absent: Italian children

- Mindset: groups in story

       - Communal: one group of inhabitants

       - Divisional: two with differen skin colour and distinct magic powers (group distinction) 

- DV: creativity:

        - Guildford's Alternative Uses Task: Write down all the different uses of a plastic bottle.

- Results 

        - Diversity: Creativity was higher for participants working in diverse groups, compared to participants working with ingroup members 

         - Mindset: Participants' mindset moderated the effect of diversity on creativity: effect only emerged when a communal mindset was salient.

Adesokan, Ullrich, van **** & Tropp, 2011

- Intergroup contact reduces prejudice (meta-analysis: Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006)

- Diveristy beliefs: strength of individuals' belief that society benefits from ethnic diversity

- Survey: 255 university students in the US 

Results:

- For individuals holding less favourable diversity beliefs:

        - Contact-prejudice relationship stronger

        - Contact-importance of contact relationhship stronger

- Contact especially benefits people who are most predisposed to being prejudice