Overestimating minority populations can lead to reduced support for diversity and inclusion programs
Our brain is attuned to noticing new things in the busy environment around us. This alertness to novelty means we are apt to overemphasize what holds our attention. When people stand out as different, they stick in our mind because of how much we initially notice their presence—and by how vividly we later recall them.
Previous research has suggested that negative attitudes toward diversity and inclusion efforts are motivated when a majority group perceives a threat by overestimating minority group size, says Maureen Craig, a social psychologist and an assistant professor at New York University, who was not involved in the new study. Its findings, she says, highlight a cognitive response that comes before the overestimation.
In the U.S., the researchers had participants look at a screen showing a grid of 100 photographs with faces of Black people and white people in different proportions. Viewers had to estimate the overall percentages of Black and white people present after seeing a set of 20 such grids, each viewed for two seconds.
The researchers also wanted to know whether preexisting expectations about which group should be in the minority would affect the outcome. They showed 100 white participants grids in which 25 percent of the photographed faces were white, making them the minority, and another set in which 25 percent were Black. In both cases, the presence of faces from less common groups was judged to be higher than it really was.
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