Department of Psychology, University of Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain.
Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
PLoS One. 2022 Aug 17;17(8):e0271356. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271356. eCollection 2022.
Economic inequality shapes the degree to which people and different social groups are perceived in stereotypical ways. Our research sought to investigate the impact of the perception of economic inequality in an organizational setting on expectations of social diversity in the organization's workforce, across the dimensions of gender and ethnicity. Combining data from previous experiments, we first explored in one set of studies (Studies 1a and 1b; N = 378) whether the degree of economic inequality in a fictitious organization affected participants' expectations of the representation of minority vs. majority group employees. We found that when we presented an organization with unequal (vs. equal) distribution of economic wealth amongst its employees to study participants, they expected the presence of men and White majority individuals to be larger than the presence of women and ethnic minorities. Second, we tested our hypotheses and replicated these initial effects in a pre-registered study (Study 2: N = 449). Moreover, we explored the potential mediating role of perceived diversity climate, that is, the perception that the organization promotes and deals well with demographic diversity. Findings revealed that an organizational setting that distributed resources unequally (vs. equally) was associated with a more adverse diversity climate, which, in turn, correlated with expectations of a lower presence of minority group employees in the organization. We concluded that economic inequality creates a context that modulates perceptions of a climate of social exclusion which likely affects the possibilities for members of disadvantaged groups to participate and develop in organizations.
经济不平等塑造了人们和不同社会群体被刻板印象看待的程度。我们的研究旨在调查组织环境中对经济不平等的感知对组织劳动力中社会多样性的期望的影响，包括性别和种族维度。我们结合了之前实验的数据，首先在一组研究中（研究 1a 和 1b；N=378）探索了一个虚构组织中经济不平等的程度是否影响参与者对少数群体与多数群体员工代表性的期望。我们发现，当我们向研究参与者展示一个组织中员工之间经济财富分配不平等（相对于平等）时，他们预计男性和白人多数群体的存在比例会大于女性和少数族裔的存在比例。其次，我们在一项预先注册的研究中（研究 2：N=449）检验了我们的假设并复制了这些初始效果。此外，我们探讨了感知多样性氛围的潜在中介作用，即组织促进和妥善处理人口多样性的感知。研究结果表明，资源分配不平等（相对于平等）的组织环境与更不利的多样性氛围相关，而这种氛围又与对组织中少数群体员工存在比例较低的期望相关。我们得出结论，经济不平等创造了一个调节社会排斥氛围感知的环境，这可能会影响弱势群体成员在组织中参与和发展的可能性。
