On Melting Pots and Salad Bowls: Tradeoffs in the Consequences of Different Diversity Ideologies

Abstract

Successfully navigating diversity is a key challenge. In tackling this challenge, individuals, organizations, and societies adopt different diversity ideologies-defined as beliefs regarding how to manage differences-yet clear evidence does not exist regarding which ideology is most effective. We conduct a meta-analysis to compare the consequences of one identity-conscious diversity ideology (multiculturalism) and three identity-blind diversity ideologies (colorblindness, assimilation, justice) for a range of outcomes associated with diversity management (prejudice, stereotyping, discrimination, diversity policy support) and organizational effectiveness (engagement, performance, withdrawal). We find that only multiculturalism reduces prejudice and increases diversity policy support, but only justice reduces discrimination. Both multiculturalism and assimilation reduce stereotyping, whereas both multiculturalism and justice increase engagement and performance and reduce withdrawal. Moreover, although justice tends to have more positive consequences than other identity-blind ideologies, assimilation and colorblindness have few negative effects. We also identify several boundary conditions for the effectiveness of different diversity ideologies (e.g., demographic characteristics, country, level of analysis). These findings document tradeoffs among different diversity ideologies, depending on the outcome of interest, and thus qualify prior conclusions that identity-conscious ideologies are uniformly preferable to identity-blind ideologies and also substantiate the need to differentiate among distinct identity-blind ideologies.