Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Apr 20;118(16). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2013833118.
It is currently commonplace for institutions of higher education to proclaim to embrace diversity and inclusion. Though there are numerous rationales available for doing so, US Supreme Court decisions have consistently favored rationales which assert that diversity provides compelling educational benefits and is thus instrumentally useful. Our research is a quantitative/experimental effort to examine how such instrumental rationales comport with the preferences of White and Black Americans, specifically contrasting them with previously dominant moral rationales that embrace diversity as a matter of intrinsic values (e.g., justice). Furthermore, we investigate the prevalence of instrumental diversity rationales in the American higher education landscape and the degree to which they correspond with educational outcomes. Across six experiments, we showed that instrumental rationales correspond to the preferences of White (but not Black) Americans, and both parents and admissions staff expect Black students to fare worse at universities that endorse them. We coded university websites and surveyed admissions staff to determine that, nevertheless, instrumental diversity rationales are more prevalent than moral ones are and that they are indeed associated with increasing White-Black graduation disparities, particularly among universities with low levels of moral rationale use. These findings indicate that the most common rationale for supporting diversity in American higher education accords with the preferences of, and better relative outcomes for, White Americans over low-status racial minorities. The rationales behind universities' embrace of diversity have nonlegal consequences that should be considered in institutional decision making.
目前，高等教育机构宣称拥抱多样性和包容性已经很常见。尽管有许多这样做的理由，但美国最高法院的裁决一直支持多样性提供了令人信服的教育益处，因此具有工具性的有用性。我们的研究是一项定量/实验性的努力，旨在研究这种工具性的理由与白人和黑人美国人的偏好如何契合，特别是将它们与以前占主导地位的将多样性作为内在价值观（例如正义）的道德理由进行对比。此外，我们还调查了工具性多样性理由在美国高等教育领域的普遍程度以及它们与教育成果的对应程度。在六个实验中，我们表明工具性理由与白种人（而不是黑种人）美国人的偏好相对应，并且家长和招生人员都期望在支持这些理由的大学中，黑种人学生表现更差。我们对大学网站进行了编码，并对招生人员进行了调查，以确定尽管如此，工具性多样性理由比道德性理由更为普遍，而且它们确实与白人和黑人毕业差距的扩大有关，尤其是在道德性理由使用水平较低的大学中。这些发现表明，美国高等教育中支持多样性的最常见理由符合白种人美国人的偏好，并且相对于低社会地位的少数族裔，他们的相对结果更好。大学对多样性的接受背后的理由具有非法律后果，应该在机构决策中加以考虑。
