Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: An Experimental Study of Diversity Management Techniques

该项目的目标是帮助公共政策减少与种族多样性有关的社会问题。大量证据表明，种族多样性削弱了群体、社区和社会采取集体合作行动的能力。然而，令人惊讶的是，人们对可能支持种族间合作的策略知之甚少。本研究采用实验方法评估了两种减少群体间偏见和促进合作的策略：倡导构建统一的上级身份以最小化群体内差异（如基于团队、国家）的自我分类（SC）策略，以及倡导构建承认多样性巨大价值的群体间信念的自我验证（SV）策略。SC和SV方法都被实证和实验证明是可行的多样性管理策略。但是现有的研究有三个局限性。首先，除了少数例外，几乎所有确定SC或SV积极影响的实验都依赖于由美国学生组成的方便样本，因此不清楚这些策略在分歧更大、更强烈的人群中会如何发挥作用。其次，大多数关于SV的研究都是定性的或基于调查研究，并没有令人信服地控制可能影响SV和群体生产力的因素。换句话说，SV是否对群体生产力有因果影响是不确定的。第三，在一个控制良好的环境中，没有研究直接比较SC和SV方法的相对效果，这使得在现实环境中选择哪种策略变得不清楚。本研究采用群体生产力与合作的实地实验来检验SC和SV方法对多样性的个体、相对和联合效果。在实验中，一个不同种族的参与者样本被招募来参加一个解决问题的比赛，以获得大笔现金奖励。参与者被分成三人一组进行比赛，随机选择各组接受SC启动，SV启动，SC和SV启动，或两者都接受（纯对照）。在这些不同的处理下，参与者尝试一系列由行为经济学家和社会心理学家设计的激励性谜题和合作任务，以研究群体生产力和合作的各个方面。然后比较两种交叉治疗的结果，以评估SC和SV策略的个体、相对和联合疗效。这项研究在一个经济和文化日益融合的世界中具有实际意义，在这个世界中，群体和社会不仅变得更加多样化，而且还担心它可能产生社会冲突。这就是实验将在肯尼亚内罗毕进行的原因，在那里，多样性似乎正在破坏半个世纪以来令人印象深刻的经济发展，即将发生的暴力事件可能会威胁到美国在该地区的利益。在肯尼亚和其他地方，许多公共和私人组织都试图通过“不分肤色”和建立强有力的组织规范来鼓励不分背景地平等对待所有个人，从而将多样性的成本降至最低。民族国家同样诉诸诉诸集体的民族认同，作为缓解国内强烈的种族间分裂的策略。然而，目前尚不清楚这种趋同的效果如何，甚至是否可取。本研究探讨了多样性的成本和收益之间的紧张关系，并试图为我们在种族和文化上分化的群体、组织、社区和社会提供信息。

The goal of this project is to help public policy in reducing the social problems that are associated with ethnic diversity. Considerable evidence reveals that ethnic diversity undermines the ability of groups, communities, and societies to act collectively and cooperatively. However, surprisingly little is known about the strategies that might support interethnic cooperation. This research uses experimental methods to evaluate two strategies for reducing intergroup biases and promoting cooperation: a self-categorization (SC) strategy that advocates the construction of unifying superordinate identities to minimize the salience of in-group differences (e.g., based on team, nation), and a self-verification (SV) strategy that proposes the construction of intergroup beliefs that acknowledge the tremendous value of diversity.Both the SC and SV approaches have been shown empirically and experimentally to be plausible diversity management strategies. But there are three limitations to existing research. The first is that, with few exceptions, virtually all experiments that identify positive effects from SC or SV rely on convenience samples consisting of American students, making it unclear how these strategies would fare in populations with deeper and more intense divisions. Second, most research on SV is qualitative or based on survey research, and does not convincingly control for factors that might affect both SV and group productivity. In other words, there is uncertainty as to whether SV has a causal impact on group productivity. And third, no studies compare directly the relative efficacies of the SC and SV approaches in a well-controlled setting, making it unclear which strategy to prefer in real-world settings. To make a scientific advance, this research uses a field experiment in group productivity and cooperation to test the individual, relative, and combined efficacies of the SC and SV approaches to diversity. In the experiment, an ethnically diverse sample of participants is recruited to participate in a problem-solving competition for a large cash prize. Participants are divided into groups of three for the competition, and groups are randomly selected to receive an SC prime, an SV prime, both SC and SV primes, or neither (pure control). Under these different treatments, participants attempt a series of incentivized puzzles and cooperative tasks designed by behavioral economists and social psychologists to study various aspects of group productivity and cooperation. Outcomes are then compared across the two cross-cutting treatments to evaluate the individual, relative, and combined efficacies of the SC and SV strategies.This research has practical implications in a world of increasing economic and cultural integration, where groups and societies are not only getting more diverse, but also fearful of its potential for generating social conflict. This is the reason the experiment will be conducted in Nairobi, Kenya where diversity appears to be undermining a half-century of impressive economic development, with imminent violence that would have been a threat to American interests in the region. Many public and private organizations, in Kenya and elsewhere, have tried to minimize the costs of diversity by becoming "colorblind" and creating strong organizational norms to encourage equal treatment of all individuals regardless of background. Nation-states have similarly resorted to appeals to a collective, national identity as a strategy for alleviating intense interethnic cleavages domestically. Yet it is not clear how effective or even desirable such convergence to homogeneity is. This research explores this tension between the costs and benefits of diversity, and attempts to inform our approaches to ethnically and culturally fractionalized groups, organizations, communities, and societies.